The County Government of Embu has committed Sh25 million for the construction of a modern parchment coffee warehouse with a capacity of 30,000 bags.
The warehouse will be constructed at the Embu County Coffee Mill located in Kavutiri in Runyenjes Constituency, which serves as the central hub for coffee processing and marketing across the entire county.
Speaking after inking the deal for the commencement of the warehouse construction that will take six months, County Executive Committee Member (CECM) in charge of Agriculture John Nyaga said the facility has been designed to enhance value addition and quality preservation.
He said the investment will go a long way in addressing the storage deficit at the mill by enabling it to handle all the volumes of coffee produced across the county amounting to 2, 500 tons per year.
Other than acting as a collection point, the Kavutiri Mill is equipped with machinery for milling, grading, roasting, blending and packaging under one roof, with Nyaga saying the warehouse will assist the mill to run continuously without having to halt operations for lack of adequate storage for parchment coffee.
“Previously, the mill could only process what it had the space to store and thus operated at a minimum level for lack of enough space to store parchment coffee awaiting processing,” he noted.
Additionally, the CECM said the warehouse will also aid in eliminating coffee theft at factory stores by centralizing storage where adequate security is guaranteed.
Consequently, Nyaga appealed to coffee societies to immediately move dried parchment to the central hub where safety cannot be easily compromised unlike at the scattered factories stores.
He further added that bulk storage will also give the management time to hold on to the commodity until market conditions are ideal instead of being forced to dispose of the product into a saturated market for lack of adequate storage.
County Chief Officer in charge of Agriculture Njeru Mwita appealed to farmers to increase production now that the upcoming warehouse will offer adequate capacity to mill, grade and store all locally harvested coffee.
The Mill Chair Wilfensio Njeru said the current storage capacity of the mill was 2, 000 bags that posed a big challenge to coffee farmers during the peak harvesting season when factories deliver higher volumes that the warehouse can handle.
“With the new development, we will be able to accommodate all the coffee produced across the county without turning away some of the deliveries from our societies,” he reported.
By Samuel Waititu
