STiR coffee and tea magazine

46 STiR coffee and tea | 2024 Issue 4 (August / September) Zambia, supplying an interest-free loan to be repaid over 30 years. Construc- tion began in 1970, and operations com- menced six years later. There have been no significant extensions to the line in over 50 years. Kampala, Uganda, is another ben- eficiary. The distance from Kampala to Mombasa is around 1,200 kilometers. Transporting a container by truck costs about $156 per ton per kilometer, with higher insurance premiums than trains, tolls, border crossing fees, handling ex- penses, and labor for loading and unload- ing tea. Kampala is 500 kilometers from Nairobi and another 500 miles from Mombasa. It takes a pair of drivers 20 hours to travel 1,146 kilometers to the port. Dar es Salaam is 1,690 kilometers distant, adding four hours one-way to the trip. Rwanda is 25 hours from Mombasa by truck, and Burundi is 25 hours. Ship- ping tea via train makes the destinations equidistant. Shipping tea by train across Tanzania to Dar es Salaam will be faster and less costly for some growers than shipping tea to Mombasa. Coffee Logistics Also Benefit Green coffee is much denser than tea, and it takes a lot more coffee to brew a cup than leaves of tea. A 20-foot con- tainer holds between 250 and 325 60-kilo bags (420 46-kg bags) of coffee, about 19 metric tons or 42,000 pounds. A 40-ft container holds 27 metric tons of screen size 16/18, about 59,525 pounds. In Kenya, more than 85% of the country's coffee is traded through the government's Nairobi Coffee Exchange, where it is auctioned and then shipped to 45 countries; most Kenyan coffee is des- tined for Germany, Belgium, and the US. Exporters sample coffee at the auction. The full lots are stored in mammoth stor- age units on pallets. Some milling, sort- ing, and packing is done in Kenya, but once the coffee is sold, it typically travels by truck or train to Mombasa, the point of loading or departure (POD). Transporting a 40-ft container of coffee from the certified warehouses in Nairobi to Mombasa costs about $4,212. Shipping the same container by rail costs about $2,484. Kenya has a well-devel- oped rail system. Transporting coffee by truck from Uganda to Mombasa or from the Congo to Dar es Salaam takes days and adds substantially to the cost. The Nairobi Mombasa Railway runs through the Nairobi National Park, Kenya. Eight wagons with a locomotive front and back can carry 598 passengers and travel at an average speed of 160 kilometers per hour. Lining up Investors Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda each rely heavily on outside financiers and public-pri- vate partnerships to build these railways. China is the largest investor. Following a pullback that temporarily halted construction, China's Exim Bank committed to additional financing for the northern segment connecting Naivasha- Kisumu-Malaba in May.

• Cover