The Managing Director Mr. Edward mudibo interview on K24 inside business

The East African Tea Trade Association is a progressive and socially aware organization. As such we are dedicated to integrating good corporate citizenship into our business strategies. CSR is integral to the long term sustainability of our business. In line with the mandate of theAssociation, the following CSR Projects were supported under EATTA’s CSR Programme 2016:

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The Mombasa International Show (MIS) was established in 1903 and is situated on the North Coast of the Coastal Resort City of Mombasa. This year EATTA participated in the Mombasa International Show under the ambit of AFA. The theme for the Trade Fair this year was “Enhancing Technology in Agriculture and Industry for Food Security and National Growth”, in other words . “Kuimarisha Teknologiaya Kilimo na Viwanda Ili Kujitosheleza Kwa Chakula Na Ustawi Wa Taifa”

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Pre-qualification of Suppliers Tender (2017-2018) - East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA) is in the process of compiling its list of suppliers for the period 2017/2018. Interested suppliers are invited to apply for per-qualification indicating the goods or services they can supply or offer.

On Tuesday 12^th April 2016, EATTA hosted the Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture Hon. Willy Bett, the Acting Interim Head of Tea Directorate Mr. Samuel Ogola, and Member of Parliament for Makueni as well as member of the Parliamentary Committee for Agriculture, Livestock and Cooperatives Hon. Daniel Maanzo.

This is the first visit by the Cabinet Secretary since he was appointed to the position in December 2015. On hand to meet with the CS were EATTA Board members including Mr. Jacob Kahiu, Mr. Gideon Mugo, Mr. Simon Gikanga and Mr. Ben Gitonga.

In his remarks to those present, Mr. Bett said that he had not received the final report of the task force constituted to look into the tea industry. He said that the Government was keen to adopt the recommendations in the task force in as far as it would be of benefit to the tea producer. He said that he was looking into the recommendation that the Ad Valorem Levy be reduced from 1% to 0.75%. He asked for a confirmation that the benefit of the reduction of the levy would accrue to the producer.

The CS was informed that of fact that the Mombasa Auction was a multi origin market, any tax subjected to teas from one origin in exclusion to other origin teas will disadvantage that tea. A buyer will discount the cost of the tax on Kenyan tea to cover the amount they will need to pay.

The CS wanted to know why the prices had been declining since the end of January. It was explained to him that the decline in prices is as a result of the increase in volume offered that is up 19% compared to the same period in 2015.

The Secretary of State for International Development in the UK, Hon. Justine Greening, was in Mombasa to assess the progress of Kenya in terms of trade, investment and economic growth, supported by her government.

As part of the programme, she met key private sector players based in Mombasa to discuss on trade, economic policy and regulatory matters.  She also sought to know more about transport infrastructure; doing business and investing in Mombasa; and priorities of the County of Mombasa. EATTA was represented in the meeting by the Trade Development Manager Mr. Brian Ngwiri. In the discussions held, Brian articulated the challenges faced by Mombasa based businesses caused by the poor road network, irregular and unreliable power supply and the Mombasa County Governments haphazard charging of cess and levies that are costly for the businesses based here. On tea specific issues that the tea industry is experiencing, Brian informed the Secretary for International Development that support for value addition initiatives including developing a common user facility would be a positive development. Brian gave the Secretary of State an update on the progress on automation of the Mombasa Tea Auction and the support from TradeMark East Africa. Brian, informed Ms Greening on the necessary support that would be welcome from TMEA for an end to end tea value chain intervention including capacity building in crop husbandry to ensure a better quality tea is produced upstream to capacity building to encourage SME’s develop necessary skills for developing new market opportunities.

Accompanying Ms Greening was the Principal Secretary for International Trade Dr. Chris Kiptoo and CEO of Shippers Council of East Africa Mr. Gilbert Langat. The Association was represented by Mr. Meshack Kipturgo of Siginon Group. Other organisations represented were KATO, KAM, Chamber of Commerce and Mombasa County Government.

East Africa Tea Trade Association once again invites you to the most iconic tea event held in Africa . The 3rd Africa Tea Convention and Exhibition.

An  excellent panel of speakers will be on hand to ensure the convention will be one of the most important events you attend in 2016.

3^rd  African Tea Convention - Leaning Forward Through Innovation

26^th - 28^th October 2016
Leisure Lodge Beach & Golf Resort
Diani, Kenya 

A Video featuring EATTA functions and processes as a corporate body that brings together all  tea players along the tea value chain in East and Central Africa.

Mr. Simon Gikang’a has over 24 years practical experience in freight forwarding and logistics business. He holds an MBA degree in strategic management from the University of Nairobi and a B com - Marketing (Hons) degree from the University of Nairobi. He is also a holder of a post graduate diploma in Clearing, Warehousing and Practical Forwarding DCWF (Bandari College), certificate in Logistics management, Warehouse operations & Design (Logistics Centre- University Campus Cranefield - UK) and FIATA (Zurich – Switzerland ) certificate of competence in freight forwarding. He is currently the General Manager- Freight of Chai Trading Co Ltd (A subsidiary Co. of KTDA Holdings Ltd) and previously he was the Operations Manager at Mitchell Cotts Freight K. Ltd. Prior to this, he was working with Afro Forwarders Ltd as the Resident representative based in Dar-es- salaam Tanzania.

Mr. Simon Gikang’a is also the current chairman of the Tea Warehousing Association (TWA) and a member of the EATTA Finance and Administration Committee. 

Ms.Nelius Wanjiru Kariuki is a career civil servant. She has worked in the Ministries of Commerce and Industry, Finance and Planning and National Development starting as an Economist and rising to the level of Principal Economist.  She has been a Director of Nelleon Development Company Limited.

An alumni of Alliance Girls High School as well as the University of Nairobi, from where she graduated with an M.A and a B.A in Economics.  She has served as a Board member in various girls’ high schools as well as The Murang’a Teachers College.  She has also served in various business and professional organizations.

She served on the Board of Kenya Re as a Director from 2003.  In 2007, she was appointed as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. She led the Corporation through its first IPO and is recorded as the first woman to ring the bell at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

Under her Chairmanship, Kenya Re continued to experience an upward trend in its financial performance. In addition, Kenya Re’s business saw the Corporation open regional offices in Abidjan in 2010.  She was instrumental in steering Kenya Re to attain and maintain the ISO 9001:2008 standard as well as successful CSR Progamme - Niko Fiti- Abillity Beyond Disability.

Her social interests include golf, a sport in which she has served in various positions rising to become Chairman of the Veterinary Laboratory Sports Club.  She has also served in the Kenya Ladies Golf Union.

Click here to view the live auction

The East African Tea Trade Association is a voluntary organization bringing together Tea Producers, Buyers (Exporters), Brokers, Tea Packers and Warehouses, all working to promote the best interests of the Tea Trade in Africa. Currently, membership comprises over three hundred companies extending across the East and Central African borders. EATTA mandated to promote and facilitate the interests of all the stakeholders in the tea trade in Africa by creating an enabling business environment geared towards maintaining global standards and delivering tea products to the customers in the most profitable way.

Vision: To be the leading tea trade association globally.

Mission: To facilitate a world class trading platform for African teas and provide sustainable service to members.

In the last update from the secretariat we informed you that we had written to KRA seeking an appointment to raise concerns on various issues of concern to the tea industry.  We obtained an appointment for 20th March 2013 and together with a few members of the trade, we went and met with the Senior Deputy Commissioner for Southern Region as well the Line Managers responsible for issues of concern to the tea industry.

The issues discussed in the meeting were;

1. Delay in cancellation of VAT bonds
2. Delay in reactivating archived T 810 forms
3. Lack of staff to release customs holds of containers

The outcome of our discussion was as follows:

1.    Delay in cancellation of VAT bonds

Some of our members have been following up with KRA for cancellation of bonds going back 7 years. KRA informed the people in the meeting that part of the problem maybe exporters who fill the certificates of exports documents manually instead of the required online process. The Deputy Commissioner in charge of port operations committed to look into the matter and in a further follow up meeting held on Thursday 4th April a way was found to sort out the outstanding bond cancellation for one of our members.

The secretariat will regularly follow up with the DC – Port Operations to ensure that the outstanding bonds are cancelled.

2.    Reactivation of T810

Tea buyers buy none Kenyan teas in the Mombasa Auction and in some cases the teas may remain in the Transit warehouse for extended periods waiting to be re-exported. A concern raised in the meeting was that the T810 documents for import entries are archived. Reactivating the archived T810’s takes very long causing delays in preparation of export entries.

KRA committed to assign a person to specifically be responsible to reactivate the import entry documents. The exporters were advised that the re-activation window is limited so they need to be keen to process the export entries immediately they request for re-activation to avoid being timed out. The EATTA team requested that the activation of T810 should have some flexibility to make amendments in cases where the wrong number of packages is keyed in.

3.    Lack of staff to release container customs hold

EATTA members raised a concern with the lack of adequate staff at shed 5 in the port to release custom holds on containers ready for export. It was reported that because the empty containers are sometimes located
A long distance from the port an exporter needing to export may require to work late into the night to get the containers into the port. On many occasions the customs officers are not available to release the customs holds.  It was agreed that the solution to address the problem was for the exporters to communicate with officers at shed 5 on the day they expect to bring in containers after hours. That way the revenue officers will be on standby to offer services to the exporters. KRA also requested that as much as possible exporters should try and bring the containers for release of hold during working hours.

Failure of Simba System

On many occasions the Simba system experiences downtime causing delays in processing exports. KRA officers informed EATTA that the reason for downtime is the process of upgrading Simba that is ongoing. As a solution it was agreed that when the system upgrade is happening KRA will be notifying EATTA when scheduled upgrades are due. Another problem is the slow connectivity of computers in shed 5. This is being addressed by KRA. A longer term solution is a seamless connection between KWATOS and SIMBA.

Some buyers have raised concern about the speed that brokers are selling tea in the auction. In the last Tea Etiquette workshop held in 2011 one of the resolutions passed was that brokers need to maintain a speed of selling five lots per minute.

Starting from sale 6 the secretariat has been monitoring the sale of tea through the auction so as to maintain a level of efficiency. This link shows an analysis of the brokers’ average speed for each of the auctions between sale 6 and 16.We urge all brokers to maintain the standard of five lots per minute particularly during this season where there is a huge amount of tea on offer in the auction.

1.0. MEETING BETWEEN Kenya Revenue Authority and  EATTA

In the last update from the secretariat we informed you that we had written to KRA seeking an appointment to raise concerns on various issues of concern to the tea industry.  We obtained an appointment for 20^th March 2013 and together with a few members of the trade, we went and met with the Senior Deputy Commissioner for Southern Region as well the Line Managers responsible for issues of concern to the tea industry.

The issues discussed in the meeting were;

• Delay in cancellation of VAT bonds

• Delay in reactivating archived T 810 forms

• Lack of staff to release customs holds of containers

The outcome of our discussion was as follows:

Delay in cancellation of VAT bonds

Some of our members have been following up with KRA for cancellation of bonds going back 7 years. KRA informed the people in the meeting that part of the problem maybe exporters who fill the certificates of exports documents manually instead of the required online process. The Deputy Commissioner in charge of port operations committed to look into the matter and in a further follow up meeting held on Thursday 4^th April 2013 a way was found to sort out the outstanding bond cancellation for one of our members.

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1.0. Meeting Between Kenya Revenue Authority and  EATTA

In the last update from the secretariat we informed you that we had written to KRA seeking an appointment to raise concerns on various issues of concern to the tea industry.  We obtained an appointment for 20^th March 2013 and together with a few members of the trade, we went and met with the Senior Deputy Commissioner for Southern Region as well the Line Managers responsible for issues of concern to the tea industry.

The issues discussed in the meeting were;

• Delay in cancellation of VAT bonds

• Delay in reactivating archived T 810 forms

• Lack of staff to release customs holds of containers

The outcome of our discussion was as follows:

a). Delay in cancellation of VAT bonds

Some of our members have been following up with KRA for cancellation of bonds going back 7 years. KRA informed the people in the meeting that part of the problem maybe exporters who fill the certificates of exports documents manually instead of the required online process. The Deputy Commissioner in charge of port operations committed to look into the matter and in a further follow up meeting held on Thursday 4^th April 2013 a way was found to sort out the outstanding bond cancellation for one of our members.

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The East African Tea Trade Association is a progressive and socially aware organization. We are dedicated to integrating good corporate citizenship into our business strategies, since CSR is integral to the long-tern sustainability of our business.Our efforts are restricted to the following identified significant areas of focus, namely:

1. Education
2. Environment
3. Worthy Initiatives.

1. ISO 22000: 2005 ( Food Safety Management System)

Overview

The ISO 22000 family of standards relate to food safety management systems and are designed to help organizations of any size and at any stage in the food chain to ensure they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders. The standards are published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization and are available through National standards bodies.

This is a standard  that defines food safety requirements that apply to all organizations in the food production this includes tea . We as EATTA encourages tea producers and warehousemen to adopt this system as this one of the requirement of buyers. The FSMS ensure that food products are produced in good manufacturing practice that cannot affect the consumer and hence impacting on the market. 

ISO 22000 describes the requirements for operating an effective food safety management system integrating the use of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) techniques and defined prerequisites for the safe production of food.

The ISO 22000 model is a systematic approach to developing, planning, validating, establishing, implementing, monitoring, verifying and improving the food safety management system. Implementation is split down into several distinct stages including:

2. Quality management principles (QMS 9001;2008)

Introduction 

The East African Tea Trade Association adopted the application of this standard by its members who are proving various services across the tea value chain. The principles  applied here  are used by senior management as a framework to guide their  tea organizations towards improved transparency and  performance. The principles are derived from the collective experience and knowledge of the international experts who participate in ISO Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, Quality management and quality assurance, which is responsible for developing and maintaining the ISO 9000 standards. 

The ISO 9000 family of standards relate to quality management systems and are designed to help organizations ensure they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders. The standards are published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization and are available through National standards bodies.

ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems, including the eight management principles on which the family of standards is based. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard have to meet.

ISO 9001 specifies the basic requirements for a quality management system (QMS) that an organization must fulfil to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide products (which include services) that enhance customer satisfaction and meet applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.

4. RAIN FOREST ALLIANCE

The Rainforest Alliance Certified™ seal is found globally on products such as cocoa, coffee, flowers, fruit, tea and vegetables from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Hawaii. The certification standards apply to over 100 types of crops and livestock.

Rainforest Alliance certification addresses whole-farm sustainability, which means that once farmers meet the certification standards, they can sell all eligible crops as Rainforest Alliance Certified.

EATTA encourages producers to be RA certified to be able to attract specific markets that source for teas farmed in rainforest Alliance certified.

5. FAIR TRADE

East African Tea Trade accepted fair trade as one of its standards as a reflection of due diligence in its operations. This standard was actually incorporated in the Tea catalogue after the approval by the EATTA Board of Directors. Fair trade  is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries to make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to exporters as well as higher social and environmental standards. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, chocolate,  and flowers. Fair trade is also associated with the trade justice movement, which advocates for fair trade public policies. There are several recognized fair trade certifiers, including Fairtrade International (formerly called FLO/Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International), IMO and Eco-Social

In 2008, products certified with Fairtrade International's Fairtrade certification amounted to approximately US$4.98 billion (€3.4B) worldwide, a 22% year-to-year increase. This represents a tiny fraction of world trade in physical merchandise, Fairtrade International claims that some fair trade products account for 20-50% of all sales in their product categories in individual countries, and in June 2008, claimed that over 7.5 million producers and their families were benefiting from fair trade funded infrastructure, technical assistance and community development projects. Fairtrade branding has extended beyond food and fibre, a development that has been particularly vibrant in the UK where there are 500 Fairtrade Towns, 118 Fairtrade universities, over 6000 Fairtrade churches, and over 4000 UK schools registered in the Fairtrade Schools Scheme. 

5. Other Standards  for tea Industry EATTA Members to facilitate includes the following:

• British Retail Consortium Standards  (BRC)
• International Food Safety Standards   (IFS)
• Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points( HACCP)
• Environmental Management Standards ( EMS:9001:2004)
• Halal 

The weekly Mombasa tea auction is at the center of the tea trade in Kenya, and an important reference point for the global tea industry.

It is the only centre where teas from different countries are sold alongside each other, and therefore helps to establish price levels and differentials for teas all over the world.

It is important to understand how the auction works, and this short guide is designed to help those visiting for the first time, and anyone else who needs a basic understanding.

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