Main Factors that affect profitability of tea plantations are: drought , forex rates and inflationary effect of rising wages demanded by tea pickers. First two are largely out of reach of the companies. Can the plantations control the third by substituting manual with mechanical picking? Hard since thousands of workers and their families literary depend on the tea plantation wages for their livelihoods. Unless the plantations first excise some of their land to the tea pickers, there will be a social revolution when the kaleos start asking for their land back. Meanwhile tea revenues will suffer since picking is continuous and a bush is picked every 14 days. www.nation.co.ke/News/Te...-/1056/1038970/-/11kpaff

Perhaps they need to be educated that mechanisation is a global trend, which if not adopted will make local tea firms uncompetitive.

Replacing of men with machine is inevitable but good news is that the mchines will me operated by humans. Atwoli need to stop running away from this fact.

Perhaps it is time for the kaleos to form co-ops (or land-buying firms) like kikuyus did & offer to buy out the farms/plantations. I would be happy if Williamson sold out the farms at NAV...

@y multinationals like unilever, finlays and eagads own tens of thousands of hectares. Tea pickers number in tens of thousands and are dependent on the plantations for income. Unless these guys are given land or some other source of income, things will be bad.

I don't support this idea of people uprooting coffe/tea bushes for real estate it will eventually kill of the Kenyan Tea industry cos everybody will be like why stick to tea if real estate offers better returns...