In a recent article, I took up the challenge from the President to the tea industry to brand Kenya tea to increase its visibility in the global market and label it with a mark of origin. He went further to push for the establishment of common user facilities to drive this challenge.
Just so that we may bring along everyone on what a common user facility (CUF) is, it’s a multi-industry user facility that provides infrastructure and services on a project-by-project basis. It is supposed to have an open access policy and is large enough for a number of different companies to undertake their projects at any one time. In our case, it’s supposed to drive branding Kenya tea, labelling it with a Kenyan mark of origin so it could have greater visibility and easily penetrate the global market.
Many of us think of establishing an ultramodern tea packing facility as the CUF. This will be just part of it; in fact, the last part of it. But there is more.
In 2005, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre launched the DMCC tea centre, a purpose-built facility that provides tea storage, processing, packing and trading services, alongside networking opportunities between its members. DMCC serves as a vital platform for innovation within the tea industry, providing members with a full spectrum of services, including storage, blending, packaging and a robust global trading platform. Through the tea centre, DMCC has established the UAE as the world’s largest re-exporter of tea.
The DMCC Trade Centre is the closest example one can pick for a CUF. But the Kenyan one needs to be much superior and unique as Kenya is not only the leading exporter of teas in the world that houses the biggest tea auction, but also produces some of the best quality teas that are much sought after to blend others to achieve a sale. All this should be happening here.
A national CUF is not only critical but also urgent. It will be part of Kenya's redemption moment as a global leader in the supply of quality teas but has let herself earn the least in value terms compared to other leading tea exporters. Therefore, this CUF must as a matter of necessity build local capabilities to drive branding Kenya tea, labelling it with a Kenyan mark of origin, pushing for greater visibility so as to easily penetrate the global market.
This must be part of the game plan of competing in global markets by developing global competitive advantage and positioning our teas in the global market. It has to start by identifying the markets we shall supply with the products from the CUF. This will include different kinds of teas and the manner of presentation. In the end, we shall have identified niche markets to supply. It’s never a one-size-that-fits-all.
With the clarity of the demand end, the country will draw a plan that’s multifaceted to exploit our natural inherited comparative advantage in our teas, the availability of the various tea types by clonal material, processing methods and possible flavouring, scenting and blending to create Kenyan unique products. This will enable us to target some high-value markets as well as attract foreign direct investments.
The CUF should therefore enable Kenyan tea companies to develop specific competitive advantage in products, processes and marketing. As capabilities grow, the CUF should widen exports to focused segments of high-value markets, especially in advanced economies, and thereafter combine the company-specific competitive advantage with the advantages of a strong national cluster to start exporting to these high-value markets.
The CUF shall therefore be many things as a one-stop solution for the high-value global market for Kenyan teas. It should therefore be a primary tea trading floor, a marketing strategy centre, a brands creation centre, a blending floor, a packaging solutions centre and a global standard packing floor.
With the recently developed local technologies in tea quality analysis, determination, monitoring, trending valuations and matching based on measurable values as to subjective human sensory sampling, this should have taken off yesterday.
Dongo Kundu, here we come. The CUF for the tea industry can be achieved faster than we thought.