Tea prices at the weekly Mombasa auction rose slightly this week amid increased volumes traded. At this week’s auction, a kilo averaged USD2.22(Sh263.85), up from USD2.21(Sh262.66) last week.
The total volume traded this week was 150,380 kilos more than last week, the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA)notes.
There was a general demand at irregular levels for the 180,695 packages (11,877,084.00 kilos) available for sale with 132,937 packages (8,761,661 Kilos) being sold.
In the past three weeks, the commodity’ prices have been declining, which saw huge volumes of teas withdrawn from the auctions to be introduced in future sales.
The price increase saw the percentage of unsold packages drop to 26.43 per cent from 30 per cent in last week’s auction.
“Egyptian Packers, Yemen, other Middle Eastern countries and Sudan, maintained useful support with improved interest from Kazakhstan, other CIS states and UK while Pakistan Packers, Bazaar and Afghanistan showed reduced activity,” EATTA managing director Edward Mudibo.
He further added that Russia was less active with Iran absent, while local packers maintained interest with Somalia active at the lower end of the market.
