Why mechanising tea production could pay

It is not a matter of if, but when. Given that Kenya consumes only five per cent of the tea it produces, and exports the rest, it is essential that the Kenyan tea industry remains globally competitive – and the only way it can do so is by modernising operations through mechanisation and automation. Several industries with similar challenges will follow suit.

A person who looks rationally at the production economic facts will realise that globally, tea farmers are losing competitiveness because of escalating costs of production. Those are the clear trends ahead.