Thika Coffee Mills
Thika Coffee Mills (TCM) is a private limited liability company and a leading green coffee expert in Kenya based in Thika which is about 50 kilometres from Nairobi. TCM provides holistic solutions to farmers, green coffee buyers and roasters.
Since its inception in 1920, this company has developed into an integral player in the market over the years. Initially it was a water-powered maize mill, but today TCM offers coffee management services, milling and related services to the farmers. It has since developed to pioneer efficacious coffee processing with its efficient machinery and coffee marketing services.
TCM stands out as one of the major player in the coffee sector offering unlimited value chain services. TCM is leader in processing of African coffees, marketing and exporting through providing coffee solutions in a sustainable and cost effective way with staff who are honest and of high integrity, providing excellent customer service, Innovative and highly motivated, transparent and socially accountable.
Over the years, the company has worked very closely with the Kenyan coffee farmer to guarantee better returns and ensuring they have a greater say in the handling of their coffee. Milling and Export of green coffee Thika coffee mills, exports green coffee to USA, Europe, Japan and Asia. TCM is vertically integrated, with the mill registered to handle not only conventionally produced coffee but certified coffee including Fair-Trade, Organic and Utz Kapeh coffee.
TCM offers coffee through auction and direct selling. By employing skilled professionals with vast experience in this area and with an advanced supply chain, most coffee farmers get real value for their crop through selling to the highest bidders of whom overtime they have established and understood their buying requirements.
Extensive field reach out
TCM has an extensive branch network that covers all the coffee producing regions. The branches have qualified agricultural officers competitively recruited from the job market. The officers offer advise in best agriculture practice and are continually trained to ensure that new technology is passed on to the farmers.
On-farm management services are offered to both small and large scale farmers. There are activities meant to build and educate farmers on matters of organic farming as well.
Parchment coffee transportation from the farms to the mills
The extensive branch network provides vehicles that collect coffee from the small scale farmers, delivers to various countrywide stores before the produce is transported to the mills. For societies and large scale growers TCM ensures and provide secure transportation of their coffee to the mills.
Boosting the farmers
TCM has established a working relationship with reputable inputs suppliers where farmers can collect their farming requirements. The process of establishing a farm inputs stores is underway. TCM obtains the most competitive prices from bulk suppliers of farm inputs.
The growers who obtain advances from TCM are mostly cooperative societies and estates. The process of advances is made simple for the grower while ensuring that the amounts advanced have sufficient collateral.
TCM has invested heavily in the coffee industry. As a pioneer in various reforms in the coffee sector and with the investment in the industry, TCM developed its own resources as provided within governance. This has been necessitated by failure on the part of the regulatory body to enforce and implement policies that will further the growth of this sector.
Some causes of poor coffee production
- Resource constraints – most of the coffee is grown by small scale farmers who due to their state may not have access to resources to improve production. This has continued to see production per unit drop.
- Inability – most farmers due to the days of poor pay for coffee have chosen to neglect the crop on their farm and have chosen not to continue tending it.
- Extension influence – agricultural extension officer have not been available to train farmers on good agricultural practices in coffee husbandry,
- Seasonality – coffee is a seasonal crop and yet the returns have not compensated the farmers as well as the horticultural crops thus the shift.
- Off-farm employment - the younger generation that has inherited the coffee land have chosen to look for white and blue collar jobs and either neglect the coffee on the farm or uproot it altogether for real estate development especially in Kiambu where plantations are fast turning into real estate.
- Conditions attached to rural credit (lack of availability of cash & access to inputs on credit),
- Risk aversion – most small scale farmers are not willing to risk the proneness of the coffee to succumb to adverse weather conditions and other coffee tree diseases.
- Lack of manure for adoption of soil fertility management – without good soil management the production will continue to deteriorate.
In view of the above and many other causes of the decline in coffee production in Kenya, TCM has taken the initiative to sensitise farmers and other stakeholders including the government to improve productivity for individual farmers through own initiated program of Increased Production and Improved Quality (IPIQ) This program is meant to revive the coffee sector to it glorious days when it was referred to as the “black gold”. This is a partnership with other players in the sector to focus on changing farmers’ attitude towards coffee growing as a business.
