In the news:

• Kenyan, Burundi tea fetch highest prices at auction:

Tea from Kenya and Burundi fetched the highest prices at the weekly Mombasa tea auction over the last 12 months.

New data showed that of all the 12 countries participating at the auction, Kenyan and Burundian tea remained most popular in the year-to-date, recording premium prices compared to the rest.

The average auction price of Kenyan tea stood at $3.01 per kilogramme at this month’s sale compared to $2.74 last October, marking a variance of $0.27 a kilo.

(BusinessDailyAfrica.com, November 2, 2011.)

For more on the booming tea prices, read Judith Evans’s article on Pu-erh tea, Cultural thirst drives China’s high-end tea boom.