Spice board: K1.3bil worth of product exported in last 4 years

Business

THE country’s spice industry has exported K1.3 billion worth of products in the past four years, says Spice Industry board chief executive officer Nelson Simbiken.
Simbiken said in 2021, K400 million worth of products were exported – above the average of more than K300 million.
“From 2019 to now, revenue from export we have from Customs and National Agriculture and Quarantine Inspection Authority ( (showed that) the industry has exported K1.3 billion,” he said.
“On an annual basis, spice industry has been exporting over K300 million on an annual basis.
“In 2019, the spice industry exported over K500 million, in 2020 K600 million, in 2021 over K400 million.” Simbiken said the spice industry was picking up after being slow for some years.
“At the moment, its dead,” he said.
“We are resurrecting it to make it grow. The significance of that is that with one kilogram of a spice, you’ll get 100 times the value in terms of money than the similar amount of commodities like cocoa and coffee.
“For example: one kilogramme of coffee, raw beans, you get K7, or, for parchment, it’s about K4.
“For cocoa, one kilogramme is about K6 to K7. But for spice, the raw product, especially vanilla, with one kilogram is about K200.
“So most of the farmers for other crops work hard to get 60kg of cocoa bean and wait for transport to bring it to town. But for vanilla, you get about 10kg, put them in your bag and come in and get higher value compared other commodities.”