Fairtrade Leaf Tea

This wonderful Fairtrade Loose Leaf Tea is from a certified Fairtrade Estate from the East side of the Rift Valley in Kenya, a KTDA (Kenya Tea Development Agency) owned estate. It has a bright colour, a strong liquor and an excellent flavour.

The Fairtrade mark was conceived in 1982 by the Dutch philanthropist Max Havelaar. By 1998 the framework had been devised tested audited, given legal precedent and came into operation. Although the principals for the Fair-trade mark had been originally aimed at the plight of the poorest coffee farmers, the model worked well for other small-holder grown products. Therefore, bananas, cocoa and tea, as well as coffee were available and were some of the first Fairtrade products available in this country. For the first year or so much of the work with tea had been done by Fairtrade in Darjeeling and it was not until the first African Tea Estates passed their Fairtrade audits that small leaf (CTC) tea became available. In the UK we drink 165million cups of tea everyday and 96% of this is small leaf (CTC) tea in teabags. Therefore with the advent of Fairtrade CTCs, the British public have been able to satisfy their tastes for good quality black tea and also fulfil their ethical expectations for what they are drinking.

The Kenyan Tea Development Agency started to produce Fairtrade teas circa 2002 and today the majority of KTDA Estates offer a Fairtrade option. It is well-known in the tea trade that the superior teas from Kenya come from the East side of the Rift Valley and it is from here that we source our Fairtrade Kenyan tea. We offer both Fairtrade teabags and leaf tea and have used several high quality East Rift Estates over the years, some of these being, Kiegoi, Rukuriri, Kinoro, Ndima, Michimikuru and Imenti amongst others.