The European Union has recently lifted its reinforced inspections on 10% of all types of beans, such as green beans or sugar snaps, exported by Kenya, which served to check food safety aspects, including MRLs. According to Eunice Mwongera, director of Hillside Green Growers, "They will still be testing some percentage, it won’t be on every shipment, so growers, exporters and everybody in the chain will benefit from this.”
She explains that this will certainly be opening opportunities for Kenyan beans, “17% of the country’s beans go to Britain alone, so you can imagine that for Europe as a whole it’s a bigger volume. Export volumes will go up and there will be more involvement from the farming community in rural areas. I also see perhaps even more exporters coming on board. Incomes and job creation should be good.”
On the other side of the scale, she also shows concern about the possibility of exporters not implementing the rules, as this could cause the same problem to happen again. In any case, “the Government has been very involved and active in having the ban lifted and will be working very hard to ensure we don’t slide back, that there will be rules and improved traceability,” she says. “This will also give us the opportunity to expand to other markets.”
For his part, Dan Agawo, of Mboga Tuu, a leading exporter of Ethnic line vegetables and fruits to the UK, states that with the previous rules they had to use more expensive laboratories to get the results out as quickly as possible, to prevent the checks from having an impact on the shelf life and quality, and this was costly for the exporters.
As a result, he explains that before the ban they were forced to consolidate shipments, making two to three per week. With the new regulations, the number of shipments has increased to six per week. "Since the costs of MRL testing are now minimal. Before we were exporting between 60 and 90 tonnes per week and now we’ll reach 120 to 160 tonnes.”
In any case, just like Hillside Growers, he assures that Mboga Tuu also received the news with mixed reactions. “We will get things back into the market with little shipment costs, but if we don’t have good, competent authorities to regulate and ensure the rules for imports are adhered to, the EU will then be likely to impose stricter MRL checks on our beans.”
At the end of the day, he states that, once they leave the country, the beans cease to be from individual producers and become Kenyan produce, “So we’ll do our best to ensure strict adherence to the EU rules and regulations and only competent, responsible exporters are allowed to ship beans and peas into the EU,” he concludes.
For more information:
Hillside Green Growers
Eunice Mwongera
Tel 00254 202397353/208029975
Mob 0722514375
Email eunice@hillsidegreen.com
Web: www.hillsidegreen.co.ke
Skype: eunice.mwongera1
Skype: eunice.mwongera1
Mboga Tuu Ltd
Dan Agawoo
Tel 00254-202608784