- Ng'era said the innovations are affordable and will help reduce energy and labour costs.
- He said locally manufactured machinery are efficient and easy to maintain.
Tea factories will access an array of affordable equipment to reduce energy and labour costs.
Samuel Ng’era, general manager Tea Machinery and Engineering Company, which is a subsidiary of KTDA, said the innovations are affordable and will help reduce energy and labour costs. He said locally manufactured machinery are efficient and easy to maintain.
The equipment include dryers, tea packers, winnowers, bucket elevators, air preheaters, log splitters, conveyors, withering fans, ID fans and chimneys for boilers.
“Because of our unique designs and ease of running, you are able to eliminate a lot of labour which translates to savings for farmers,” he said in a statement.
Among the recently introduced equipment by Temec is a 14-blade withering fan replacing the six-blade fans that have been in use in factories. The new fan draws six amps of electricity compared to the older fans that draw 11 amps and shaves off an hour in withering time.
Miano Kagema, Makomboki Tea Factory manager, said electricity consumption in withering is one of the biggest costs of factories.
“The only way we can reduce this is by installing efficient fans that wither tea within a short time and draw minimum current,” Kagema said.
Ng’era said they have also rolled out log splitters to replace circular saws in firewood splitting. The splitters use less power, require less manpower to operate, reduce wastage and are safer.
“The firm is also installing air preheaters for boilers which helps to recover waste heat from the chimneys. This increases the boiler efficiency by about four per cent. This is in addition to induced draft fans whose imported cost is about Sh2.3 million but Temec is able to locally fabricate it at a cost of Sh1 million,” he said.
With home-grown solutions, Ng’era said they are allowing factories to be more flexible by making equipment according to available space and immediate needs.
“We understand tea production better and can therefore produce the best tea machinery. The local production has also proven a boon to tea factories as they no longer have to plan for lengthy import of equipment and can also count on quick turnaround time in case of a break down,” Ng’era said.