April 18 (Bloomberg) -- The benchmark price of tea in Malawi, Africa's second-biggest producer of the crop after Kenya, fell 2.4 percent after deliveries more than halved.
The top grade of tea, known as pekoe fannings, fell to $1.60 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) at an auction on April 8, the Blantyre Tea Auction said in an e-mailed statement from the capital, Lilongwe, today.
Deliveries of all grades and varieties fell 56 percent to 355,500 kilograms, said Emmanuel Phiri, a manager with Van Rees BV, a tea-trading unit of Netherlands-based NIBC Principal Investments.
``Deliveries slowed mainly because weather affected transport,'' said Phiri. ``It had little effect on the price.''
The U.K. is traditionally the biggest buyer of Malawian tea, followed by South Africa and Kenya. Van Rees, Unilever Plc's Lipton Tea and Stansand (Central Africa) Ltd., a unit of India's Tata Tea Ltd. are usually the biggest buyers of tea in the southern African nation.
Tea is Malawi's second-biggest export earner after tobacco.
Friday, 18 April 2008
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