Top tea firms may lose land on expiry of leases
What you need to know:
- Multinationals had expected the leases to be renewed for another 99 years, but the governor said the local community lost huge tracts of fertile land during British colonial rule and it was time to get it back.
- The companies that will be most affected are Williamson Tea and Eastern Produce that between them own 16 out of the 19 tea factories in the county.
- When the Nation called Williamson Tea’s headquarters on Manor Farm, Wiltshire in the United Kingdom, a company official also declined to comment.
Leases of multinational tea companies in Nandi County will not be renewed, the regional government has announced.
Instead, Governor Cleophas Lagat said, they would be taken over by the county “for management and creation of new jobs.”
Multinationals had expected the leases to be renewed for another 99 years, but the governor said the local community lost huge tracts of fertile land during British colonial rule and it was time to get it back.
“I want to assure the Nandi community that all the tea companies whose leases have expired will not have them renewed and the Nandi County government will manage the land on behalf of the people,” he said.
The companies that will be most affected are Williamson Tea and Eastern Produce that between them own 16 out of the 19 tea factories in the county.
The rest are run by the Kenya Tea Development Agency and Nyayo Tea Zones Corporation. Efforts to get a comment from Williamson Tea and Eastern Produce were unsuccessful with Williamson Tea — a company formed in 1969 — referring the Nation to its United Kingdom headquarters. Officials at Eastern Produce said they were not authorised to speak to journalists and added that they would respond via email.
The two tea companies employ about 40,000 people.
Governor Lagat said he would not yield to any pressure to renew the leases.
When the Nation called Williamson Tea’s headquarters on Manor Farm, Wiltshire in the United Kingdom, a company official also declined to comment.
Williamson Tea has factories and plantations in Kapchorwa, Kaimosi and Tinderet.
Mr Lagat said the functions of the National Land Commission had been devolved and all the 47 counties had constituted land management boards to handle land issues.
The Nandi leases were to initially run for a period of 999 years, but that was reduced to 99 years upon promulgation of the new Constitution in 2010.
Some of the 99-year leases have now expired with others almost coming to an end amid turf wars between the county and the national governments over whose mandate it is to handle them.
