In mid-last year, a Kenyan tea buyer and exporter had its registration revoked; cutting it off from auctions, logistics systems, and export channels in one of the country’s most regulated sectors.
- •However, the company — Cup of Joe Limited — said it had complied with all regulatory requirements and was punished through a process that was opaque, biased and procedurally unfair.
- •When the dispute reached the High Court in Nairobi, the judge never reached the substance of those claims as the case was dismissed on a threshold issue: Cup of Joe had come to court through the wrong legal door.
- •The deregistration of Cup of Joe became the trigger for a broader trade rupture between Kenya and Iran, one of the country's key tea destinations.
In June 2024, Cup of Joe had applied to renew its tea trade registration and paid the required fee. A compliance inspection conducted by the Tea Board of Kenya (TBK) later that month rated the company fully compliant.
However, the renewal was not issued. By early 2025, the tea exporter was struggling to obtain shipment permits, effectively stalling exports. In July, the TBK accused the company of buying and exporting tea without a valid licence and of engaging in irregular trade involving Iran.
Those concerns were amplified by a letter from the Principal Secretary in the State Department for Agriculture, who instructed the regulator to cancel Cup of Joe’s licences. The company was summoned to a meeting in August, given a list of issues to respond to, and later informed that its registration had been revoked. The decision itself was communicated weeks later.
For Cup of Joe, the effect was immediate and severe. It meant exclusion from the regulated tea trading system, interruption of contracts and reputational damage in export markets.
Souring the Iranian Tea Market
Iranian authorities suspended tea imports from Kenya after the incident, citing quality concerns tied to the company’s alleged conduct.
Iran is among Kenya’s top ten tea export markets. In 2024, Kenya exported about 13 million kilograms of tea to Iran valued at KSh 4.26 billion, according to official trade data.
The suspension strained earnings for exporters and farmers alike and prompted bilateral talks aimed at restoring the market.
Kenya and Iran later agreed to a 60-day framework to resolve the standoff during a Joint Commission for Cooperation meeting in Nairobi. The resolutions are unclear to date.
The exporter laments…
Cup of Joe turned to the High Court through a judicial review application, arguing that the revocation violated constitutional guarantees of fair administrative action and fair hearing. The company said it had not been given clear written reasons within statutory timelines and that the process was structurally compromised.
A central plank of its argument was institutional bias. The Principal Secretary who initiated the revocation directive also sits on the TBK by law. That overlap, the company argued, made any internal redress of their complaint meaningless.
The exporter also said that TBK’s arbitrary enforcement actions undermined investor confidence in the country's tea sector, weakened export earnings, and rippled through a supply chain that supports hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers.
The regulator’s rebuttal
The Tea Board of Kenya (TBK) and the Agriculture Ministry countered that the company had been notified of the allegations, invited to respond and subjected to a process contemplated by the Tea Act.
More fundamentally, they argued that the law provides a clear appeals framework for licence revocations. One that Cup of Joe had chosen to bypass. They stated that judicial review could not replace a statutory appeal.
Based on this argument, Justice Roselyne Aburili agreed by raising the issue of jurisdiction as set out by the Tea Act. The statute sets out detailed procedures for enforcement actions and expressly allows any aggrieved licensee to appeal to the High Court.
Although courts could grant exemptions in exceptional cases, Cup of Joe had not formally applied for one.
