Price of animal feeds up by Sh200

The cost of animal feeds has shot up by between Sh200 and Sh300 for a 70kg bag.

Millers said this is due to the high cost of maize which is going for Sh3,600 for a 90kg bag owing to a shortage.

As a result, a 70 kg bag of manila feed is currently selling at between Sh2,500, up from Sh2,300.

Association of Kenya Feeds Manufacturers publicity secretary John Gathogo said there has been a short supply of maize in the country for the last two months.

He said the 300,000 bags of maize released to animal feed millers in June only lasted a month and they do not any more stocks.

“We are now left to compete with flour millers for the little maize coming from Tanzania. However, Tanzania no longer wants to sell maize to us but instead wants to sell maize flour, which cannot benefit us,” Gathogo said.

He spoke yesterday at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies during a media briefing on the challenges facing the animal feed industry in the country.

Gathogo said manufacturers want the government to approve the importation of 2.5 million bags of yellow maize from Ukraine for making animal feeds.

But agriculture Principal Secretary Hamadi Boga said the government is yet to approve the importation of maize.

Gathogo said this will address the current pressure on white maize and also reduce the cost.

"We want this process to be expedited as we only have a window of about two weeks to have imported this variety of maize failure to which, the window will either close or become expensive to ship in the produce<" Gathogo said.

"We normally get yellow maize from Ukraine and the countries along the Black Sea. In the next two weeks, the seasons will be shifting from maize to wheat. This implies that all attention will now be taken to the wheat crop with the onset of harvesting and most ships plying the route probably will be having wheat orders,” he said.

He said the yellow maize has to be GMO-free and the only country that has enough stocks to export is Ukraine. 

“The other countries where we can source maize from are Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia,” said Gathogo, who is also the managing director of Empire Feeds.

He said the millers are also pushing for the release of another consignment of maize from the strategic reserves and the Cabinet has approved the release of 1.9 million bags.