Welcome to this weeks’ edition of HK market summary: Sale number 20
Coffee aroma continued to permeate the walls of trading at 2nd floor Wakulima house along Haile Selassie avenue where Nairobi Coffee Exchange is located as sale 20 took place on Tuesday 12th March 2024. Online trading as usual also took place and the sale was completed successfully
The volumes traded decreased to 20,281 bags from 26,328 traded in sale 19 last week. Surprisingly the average price remained the same as last week at $ 232 per bag. This average price is equivalent to Ksh 99 per kilo of Cherry. Total earning from the auction was $5,786,468.20 or 805m, which was a significant decrease from $ 7,510,865 last week.
Kirinyaga county through their Kirinyaga Slopes Coffee Brokerage Company Ltd also continued to make their presence felt in the market this season. They traded 5,267 bags at an average price of $240 per bag equivalent to Ksh 102 per Kg of cherry at the trading floor . This was almost double volumes traded last week and a 12% increment in average price.
The highest price from the sale was $463 from KII factory in Kirinyaga, the 3 lots that fetched more than $400 per bag were all from this factory. This factory that is part of Rung’eto Farmers Cooperative Society has always had some of their coffee fetching highest price. I would like to congratulate farmers from this region for their great efforts. The Other factories making the top 10 list included Mutheka, Kiandu, Tambaya factory in all from Nyeri County, Mugaya Factory, Kagumo factory, Kiangothe factory and Karii factory all from Kirinyaga county. So top 10 list was shared by two counties Kirinyaga and Nyeri congratulations to these farmers.
Also to estimate price per kg of cherry from these market reports lets say $463 that was highest price paid per bag in this market, you multiply this number by dollar rate lets say 139, you then divide the number by 50 because it is 50kgs per bag, then divide by 6.5 to get the kilos of cherry ( 463*139)=64,357/50=1287/6.5=198. So $463 per bag as per this report is equivalent to Ksh 198 per kg of Cherry at the trading floor
One point I would like to clarify is that report of one sale doesn’t reflect the total sales and returns from any factory cooperative or county. Coffee is harvested, pulped, dried, milled at traded at different times. Factories and estates take coffee to the market in multiple sales (Lots) before they can compute the final price paid for all their coffee traded. So one sale or even a couple of sales are not enough to arrive at final price to be paid to farmers but it is good directional indicator of how the market is performing
Brokers
In this sale 20,307 bags of coffee were presented to the trading hall out of which 20,281 bags were bought traded at the auction. Three Lots of 26 bags received No bid. The number of brokers selling coffee at the auction were 7.Kirinyaga Slopes led the pack by successfully trading 5,267 Bags at an average price of $ 240. Alliance Berries followed closely trading 4,450 bags at an average price of $247 . Baringo Kawa Brokerage Company also presented 22 bags for trading and recived an avaraged price of $154.
Coffee Buyers
A Total of 20 buyers participated at the auction. Top 4 buyers led by Kenyacof, 26%, bought 74% of the coffee traded. Others included Ibero 19%, C.Dormans 18% and Sasini 11%. In the category of least volume procured by a buyer we had Mokal Coffee Ltd purchasing 22 bags at the auction.
By Henry Kinyua
