The use of purple tea as a beverage is new in Kenya, a country that is world famous for growing and exporting black tea. Locally, most homes are served with the traditional black tea brewed in milk for their breakfast or as a beverage used to serve visitors.
However, there are many types of teas in the market today, including herbal teas, that come with the promise to improve health and emotional wellbeing of the drinker.
The newest entrant to the Kenyan market is purple tea, which boasts of having similar ingredients as grapes and higher amounts of antioxidants that cleanse the body and keeps one healthy.
“We did some research on coloured plants and found out that vegetables such as red cabbages, red carrots and grapes have that particular colour for a reason. They have anthocyanins which are said to improve skin texture and prevent cancers,” says Roselyn Njoki, proprietor of Angie’s Tea.
The Tea Research Foundation, a government-run agency that seeks to improve on the traditional tea variety, gave these tea farmers a lot of information regarding the new tea variety. Among the ground-breaking information is that purple tea reduces the number of free radicals in the body, which are known to cause cancers and other degenerative life diseases.
Njoki and her partner Paul Njeru run the Angie’s Tea company under the flagship Njeru Industries. They have invested heavily in the project, having developed their own cottage factory which processes and packs the tea for export markets.
“We have planted over 160 acres of the crop in Maua area and we are now exporting the purple tea to Japan and China,” says Njoki.
TRF floated the idea of planting the purple tea variety when the conventional tea was getting affected by dry weather conditions. They also help farmers to secure destinations to market their product abroad.
“We went ahead and planted the tea on large scale, hanging on the faith that it will bring something good, going by the many positive results that the researchers told us about.”
The team went to work buying machines, preparing land and getting all the necessary training on how to produce the tea.
They imported specialised machinery such as rollers, sorters and driers from China, and set it up in their old store rooms.
When the tea is picked, it is brought to the factory in sacks, and workers proceed to clean the leaves, steam and roll, and then sort it through the use of various machines.
Some of the processing takes place in controlled chambers that will not allow oxidation to take place. Remember the tea is used as an antioxidant.
Purple tea has unique characteristics in that it fares best in dry conditions that enable the tea to produce its colour, which contributes to its taste.
The biggest challenge that farmers have faced is the lack of awareness of such a product in the country. They say that Kenyans only know other teas, and yet this beverage can improve their health as it quenches thirst.
Farmers are also faced with the problem of where to sell their freshly plucked purple tea leaves since the conventional factories do not process it. “Most small scale farmers have nowhere to sell their leaves. We would like to work with them so that we can take their harvests and pay them. We also need to get the news out there. This tea is not expensive to buy or prepare, but it has many advantages to consumers. The Japanese and Chinese know all these, that’s why demand is very high in these countries,” says Njeru, as he sips the freshly steamed,slightly purple, tinged beverage, sweetened with honey.
Every month, some five tonnes or more of the tea is processed, packed in large sacks and exported to China and Japan. However, when exported in bulk, it has no trademark name. Thus, there is no ‘Made in Kenya’ label to identify it well in markets abroad.
This is the gap that the tea farmer has noted and is working on it. Njeru says that value addition to any product changes its face and worth.
Njoki’s efforts to pack the tea in sachets is yielding progress. A single pack holding about 20 sachets will be selling at Sh300. They will be sold locally in small packets, such as those found in retail stores. It is recommended to be drunk sugarless or sweetened with honey.