Tea

Yesterday was to be spent with the carpenter Benson discussing the finishing touches to the workshop (security) and the pending jobs (rabbit hutch, rocking chair, possible fruit drying racks etc).

But all that will have to wait as Benson has much more importance issues to deal with. When Benson and I spoke Monday, I remarked that he seemed a little distracted and asked if there was anything the matter. Benson confided in me that last Thursday his cousin & her husband had died. Expressing my sympathies, I inquired whether they had died in a road accident. It was then that Benson came out with the horrific revelation that they had been murdered! I don’t think I have ever been so shocked in my entire life. Please don’t judge me too harshly if I tell you honestly that it is so shocking that I found it difficult to believe.

I met Benson this morning at the central Mutatu station in Murang’a to cover his €8 return fare home. The funeral is on Friday and he will come back to the school on Monday.

Back to yesterday. Whilst having breakfast, there was a knock at our door and the beaming face of Mr. Jackson appeared around it.

- “Moriega! (hello to more than 1 person i.e. James and me), I am stopping by to keep in touch, isn’t it!”

We insisted that Mr Jackson join us and we all enjoyed a hearty breakfast of fried eggs on toast, sweet potatoes and banana yoghurt all washed down with tea.

- “What is it that I can be doing for you, Mr. Matthew?” inquired Mr Jackson… so we agreed to meet again next week to explore some more and document Mr. Jackson’s stories of colonial times and the strive for independence. I also gave him a pile of literature on drying fruit as this is a new project we are considering for the school and the community. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king!

As Mr Jackson exited, in came the school welfare teacher Jane (of pre-wedding fame) to inform us that a visit to the local tea factory had been arranged for the Swedes at 10h45 and that were welcome to join them. As anything involving tea trumps all other activities, we immediately cleared our agendas.

By 11h30 we were in the school bus and driving into the hills to the north of the school (1500m – 2000m). As we climbed higher the landscape & vegetation on either side of us transformed into a rolling sea of the most glorious jade green. As far as the eye could see, the hills were a blanket of tea bushes, punctured only every now and then by the brightly coloured clothes of the tea pickers who scurried between them. Even the air had filled with the familiar scent of tea. It was a dream come true.

After 25 minutes or so, we exited the main road and followed the sign posts for the Kiru Tea Factory. 10 more minutes of bumpy track brought us to the gates of the Kiru Tea Factory Company Ltd, PO Box 187, Kiriaini.

The security guard greeted us and presented us with the Do’s and Don’ts. We returned his greeting, shook hands and exchanged a few words about football. And with the security formalities completed we drove into the compound. For those of you interested the Dos and Don’ts were:
Do:
. Register at the gate
. Report to the office first if interested in touring the factory
. Use proper PPES when at the production floor (no idea what that means but I’m sure we complied)

Don’t:
. Enter if you are suffering from a communicable disease e.g. cough, runny nose
. Shake hands when at the factory floor and avoid hanging clothes
. Touch tea with bare hands and don’t touch machines (oops and oops)

Once inside we were ushered in to the office of the factory manager Mr. John Mwega.

- “Would you like to take tea before or after the visit?” asked Mr Mwega

- “How about both?” I replied … so that was settled.

Tea in hand, Mr. Mwega told us about the company and the factory. Here is what I noted down:
. The Kiru Tea Factory was founded in 1993 following the merger of 2 other tea factories (Chinga and another I didn’t catch)
. The Kiru Tea Factory is “a new beginning from a successful past”
. The vision of the factory is to: “aim at being the best tea factory in the production, processing, dispatching of high quality tea free of food safety hazards in Africa and beyond”.
. Mr. Mwega took over as manager in 2008
. The factory has 143 salaried employees
. The factory’s biggest clients/markets are: Britain, Pakistan, Egypt & the Sudan
. The factory’s catchment covers 12 acres or 4.86 hectares of tea bushes owned by 7200 farmers (suppliers)
. A tea bush yields on average 0.9kg of tea. The target is 1.1kg
. The factory has a production capacity of 15 million kg / year
. 1kg of tea pays ca. KES12 to the farmer. At the end of May the farmer gets and extra KES5 for each kg. Then there is a bonus in December should the world market price allow. Last year the farmers received an additional KES21 for each kg…seems to be a better deal than the coffee growers get.
. Last year the world tea market suffered a short fall of 100 million kg owing to drought in Kenya & Sri Lanka. Also the civil war in Sri Lanka didn’t help. This sent prices soaring to $6/kg on the world market (hence the hefty bonus in December). This year prices have fallen back again to $3/kg as El Nino (not Torres) has brought rains and therefore increased yields / supply.
. Tea is hand-picked (only) by the locals picked all day from 07h00 to 16h00 when it is weighed at the weighing centre before being moved to the factory.

Presentations and Q&A over, we were handed over to Mr. David Irungu the production manager and our guide for the visit. We donned our long white coats and hats, and looking not unlike a bunch of flashers, we followed Mr. Irungo to the first stage of the process.

1)Offloading, Weighing & Inspection

At one end of the factory, the trucks roll in loaded with bags of handpicked tea leaves. These are unloaded and hung on hooks to be weighed again (if you remember, they have already been weighed at the weighing centre in the field…keep up). At this time, the tea leaves are also visually inspected to ensure quality.

The hooks are attached to a conveyor which carries the bags of tea into a large 2 floored hanger filled with large metal troughs.

2)Withering

The withering troughs measure about 10 metres long and 2 metres wide. They are aligned in 2 rows of 20 and cover the whole surface area of the hangar. They contain a mesh like rack upon which the tea leaves are placed

The tea leaves are spread out in the withering toughs and left for anything from 8 – 16 hours in order to reduce the moisture content of the tea from 70% to 20%. Air is blown underneath the racks to assist in the process. Mr. Irungo told us that sometimes steam is also applied to assist the process. The scientists among you may help me understand how applying steam reduces water content.

The withering troughs can process up to 60k kg / day

Once the withering process is completed and the moisture content is down to about 20%, the tea leaves are ready for the next process. Cutting

3)Cutting

Or to give it is technical name CTC – Cutting, Tearing, Crushing.

The tea leaves are brushed out of the withering troughs and onto a conveyor belt which carries the leaves through a series of machines that CTC.

Each machine CTCs the leaves smaller & smaller and finer & finer. The leaves must be much smaller in preparation for the fermentation process.

4)Fermentation

It is during the fermentation process that the tea starts to look a little more like that stuff in your tea bag.

The CTCd tea leaves are turned slowly for 90 minutes as they pass through the controlled fermenting unit. This machine adds O² and strictly controls the air flow and temperature.

This process kicks starts a natural enzyme in the tea that slowly changes the colour of the leaves from green to yellow to brown. It also begins to smell much more like tea.

After 90 minutes in the fermenter, the leaves are ready for drying.

5)Drying

As the drying process is very dusty, we all now had to put masks on.

The drying machine looks a lot like those toasters hotels have which spit your slice out at the end The leaves are dried to stop the fermenting process and ensure the tea characteristics are sealed in. This process takes about 30 minutes at 150°c. Any hotter and the tea will burn; any cooler and mould can develop.

At the end of drying, the leaves look pretty much like what you have in you tea bag. But as the leaves may still contain some undesirable particles the leaves must now be sorted

6)Sorting

To sort the tea leaves, they pass through a series of revolving fibre extracting cylinders which capture any foreign bodies.

Magnets are also used to pick up any metal chips that may still be in the tea (factory target, zero metal chips at the final magnet in the packing area).

The remaining pure leaves must then be graded.

7)Grading

Basically the tea leaves are shaken though a gigantic vibrating sieve with meshes of different sizes ranging from large at the top to very fine at the bottom (just like the soil grading tests we did at work!).

There are 7 grades or sizes, however according to Mr. Irungo, size 2 (the second largest…although still quite small) is best. The largest is apparently more expensive, but you need much more to make tea.

Once graded, the tea is stored in tanks according to grade for a maximum of 12 hours before being packed.

8)Packing

The tea leaves are then poured into foil lined bags of 75kg and bundled onto pallets ready for shipping to the tea auctions of Nairobi. They have a 3 year shelf life.

9)QC

Our final stop was in the QC room which smelt like the inside of a giant tea pot. In this room a cross section of tea is checked every hour. This enviable task falls to the management and supervisors.

And that my friends is the process of making/refining tea.

Our visit was concluded with a final cuppa and the signing of the visitors book; my entry simply read "please keep up the good work as I love tea".

I do.