The perfect brew ... how N.Wales tech is helping to save UK's favourite cuppa

A UK-backed initiative is working with farmers in Kenya to turn tea waste into clean energy and fertiliser with key help from a North Wales company.

- By REBECCA SPEARE-COLE

The so-called “Green Tea” project aims to support producers in the east African nation, which supplies around half of the tea drunk in Britain.

Most of this is produced by more than 600,000 smallholder farmers, who have seen their yields reduced and livelihoods threatened by increasingly volatile climate conditions, which in turn has driven up prices for UK consumers.

Grace Njeri Koinange, a farmer who has been growing tea on her farm near the town of Limuru just north of the capital Nairobi for more than 40 years, told the Press Association: "The weather in the locality has changed a lot... particularly this year.

"We haven't had much rain - it was very scant. This has changed the growing of the tea, so the production has really reduced in the last three years."

Ms Njeri Koinange was among the first to take part in the UK-funded Green Tea project.

The early stages of the initiative involved artisanal biochar a carbon-rich material produced by heating organic materials like tea prunings, wood offcuts and leaves being applied on her farm as fertiliser to boost soil health and improve tea flavour.

"We found it was very good," Ms Njeri Koinange said, adding that the section where the fertiliser was applied produced far more tea than other areas of the farm.

It comes as farmers like Ms Njeri Koinange face ever-tightening margins, as climate impacts and the low prices they are paid for their tea make it increasingly difficult to make a profit, or even meet the cost of labour.

"Particularly this year, we have had very low payment from the tea," she said.

"We have struggled to make a profit because (the price) is not good enough.

"It is not comfortable and we have to struggle to keep going."