The Kenyan avocado export avocado season opened on 1st March 2024 and will run until November 2024.
There has recently been an uptick in demand for clean-quality seedlings and the government intervention of supplying quality seedlings to farmers was well received by farmers. This improved the season's growing conditions which was targeted on increasing the volumes in the new season.
"With the clean-quality seedlings at the beginning of the season, the intervention brought some good improvement on our quality and sizes which in return will be appreciated by our existing and the new targeted customers," explains Solomon Mumbi, CEO at Avohass Ltd.
The Kenyan avocado production is projected to reach 445,650 metric tonnes by 2026 which will represent a growth of 3.5 percent. With the new initiatives this season, the volumes will increase in line with the country's 2026 projections.
"As a company, our projection is to increase our current volumes of two to three containers per week to at least five to six containers per week. We have our own production, but we have also contracted selected farmers who we recommend high quality seedlings to farm on our behalf based on our order volumes."
Currently Avohass' main market is Europe, but they are also exploring the Chinese and Indian markets and are hopeful of getting into the Middle Eastern market.
There is a lot of production coming from emerging African avocado exporting countries but according to Solomon the other African producing countries are brothers. "I believe any other country increasing their production will not affect the Kenyan market, the market is big enough for everyone, and with more players onboard this will increase the competition which is good for the market as it will bring about the product quality which will be good for our customers and the industry."
Europe is traditionally a big export market for Kenyan avocados, and the situation in the Red Sea could be problematic.
"The Red Sea issue is a factor to consider which will lead to longer shipping times of our products to our targeted destination, as we observe this situation, we will be giving our customers the option of using air as the alternative means of transport as we monitor the situation."
Solomon Mumbi
Avohass Limited
Tel: +254 72687 7189
Email: avohasslimited@gmail.com