Anverally Kentea Limited has opened an office in Nairobi, giving the Sri Lankan tea exporter its first formal Kenyan base inside the world’s largest black tea trading hub. Chairman Mohamed Anverally announced the move on LinkedIn this week, naming a leadership team of Suranga Liyanarachchi as chief operating officer, Inoka Geeganage as chief commercial officer, and Rashmi Ruwanpura as head of operations for Kenya.
Geeganage’s appointment is the detail worth watching. She was Head of Finance at Anverally & Sons’ Colombo headquarters as recently as 2020. Moving her into a commercial role running the Kenya unit means the office opens with someone who already knows the parent company’s numbers, not a local hire building trust with headquarters from zero.
The timing lands inside a tightening trade. Mombasa runs the world’s largest black tea auction, where Kenyan exporters have paid a new 0.8 percent export levy since May, on top of longer shipping routes caused by Middle East disruption. The most recent weekly sale sold just 9.19 million of the 12.52 million kilogrammes offered, leaving 27 percent unsold, the highest share recorded this year. Exporters are absorbing roughly Sh80,000 per container in levy charges, and some buyers are shifting toward Rwandan and Burundian tea that carries no equivalent charge.
Anverally already appears on Kenya’s registered tea buyer and exporter list, so the Nairobi office formalises an existing trading relationship rather than opening a new market. That distinction matters in a beverage sector where Kenyan regulators are pushing hard on traceability: distributors already track excise compliance as closely as pricing, and consumer-facing scrutiny of import claims is rising alongside soda volumes.
Whether Anverally Kentea starts buying directly at the weekly Tuesday sale, or keeps sourcing through existing brokers, will show how much the levy is actually reshaping who shows up at Mombasa.
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