Kenya, Africa’s third-biggest arabica-coffee producer, may get a bumper harvest later this year as rains in key growing areas boost yields.
The country is getting good rains, which will improve yields for the harvest that runs from September through December, Mansukh Shah, managing director of Alanwood Ltd., a Nairobi-based trading house, said.
Rains have been favorable this year in top-growing areas of Mount Kenya, Machakos and Central Province, and bean size and quality will be good, he said.
“We are expecting a good harvest both for the early crop and the main harvest from September to December,” Kizito Keya, a coffee trader for Mombasa, Kenya-based Mumba Coffee Ltd., said by phone from Nairobi.
Shah and Keya didn’t give estimates for the harvest size. Grenville Kiplimo Melli, the interim director at Kenya’s Coffee Directorate, also didn’t provide an output forecast for next season, which runs the 12 months though September 2017, when contacted by Bloomberg.
In September, Melli said this season’s output may climb 18 percent to 45,000 metric tons and that the nation is targeting production of as much as 100,000 tons within five years
Bloomberg