A weekly heartbeat for black tea
The Mombasa tea auction, run under the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), is the single most important price-discovery mechanism for black CTC teas outside India. Teas from Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and beyond are catalogued, tasted by brokers, and sold to buyers who ship them to blending houses from Karachi to London.
Because so much of the world's everyday black tea passes through this one room, the average price realised in Mombasa is watched as a barometer for the entire CTC market. When Mombasa firmens, blenders everywhere feel it within weeks.
From outcry to screens
The auction began as a classic open-outcry sale: brokers shouted bids and a hammer fell on each lot. As volumes grew from a few lots to many thousands per week, the system moved through printed and Excel catalogues to live data capture, and finally to a fully electronic auction where bids are placed on screens in real time.
Automation changed the rhythm but not the fundamentals. Brokers still taste and value every lot before the sale, and buyers still rely on those valuations to decide how far to bid.
Who is in the room
Three groups meet at the auction. Producers — from multinational estates to Kenya's vast smallholder sector — consign their made tea. Brokers sample, value and catalogue it, then conduct the sale. Buyers, representing packers and importers worldwide, bid for the lots that fit their blends.
This triangle keeps the market honest: a broker who over-values tea loses buyers, and one who under-values loses producers. The result is a price that genuinely reflects what the world's blenders will pay that week.
What moves the price
Weather is the first driver. Drought in Kericho or excess rain in Nandi changes the quantity and quality of leaf within weeks. Currency is the second: the Kenyan shilling's movement against the US dollar directly shifts what exporters earn. Third is demand from the big absorbing markets — Pakistan, Egypt, the UK and the Gulf.
For a trading house like ours, reading the Mombasa catalogues each week is basic hygiene. It tells us when to cover forward requirements and when to wait.
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