Momul Tea Factory

After visiting the tea plantation, I went onto the Momul Tea Factory to see how the leaves are made into tea. Momul is supplied with tea from 13,000 local farms - it is Kenyan owned. The process of turning the leaves into tea is very complicated. First they bring it in bags on big trucks; it is weighed and the 'bad stuff' is removed. Secondly they 'wither' the tea with a large fan that dries it out, reducing the moisture content to 65%. This takes 14 hours. When withered, the workers put the leaves onto conveyor belts that take it onto the next level of processing with is cutting, tearing and culling (C.T.C). This is done by an automated machine that mashes and compresses the tea leaves. After this it goes into a continuous fermenting machine to oxidize the leaves and turn them black. Stage one of this process takes 90 minutes, and stage two and three take 50 minutes each. The Green Tea does not go through this process. The next stage is to dry the fermented leaves in an oven which is heated with a huge boiler that is fueled by wood. The factory grows the trees for the boiler in a greenhouse - they grow into saplings which are then transplanted into the fields that surround the plantations.
The last step of the process is the sorting of the tea. In this step they put the tea into an agitator which sorts the tea into 7 grades (sizes) by using the automated sieve that lets the grains fall through to different levels (grades). Grades 1 and 2 are used for loose leaf tea, grades 3 and 4 are used for tea bags, and grades 5 to 7 are sent to Afghanistan to make dry wood.
Once the tea is sorted, it is bagged up into 80kg bags and sent o Mombasa where it is sold for $4US per kilo. They are then sent by sea to the distributors and repackaged. Momul tea receives 20,000,000 kilos of green leave per year, and exports 95% of that. Only 5% remains in Kenya. It is the third biggest tea producer in the world after India and SriLanka.

I thought that it was really interesting learning how they turned a little green leaf into tea. The only thing that I didn't like was the taste testing at the end!