Workers load eucalyptus logs into a plywood processing machine at Jimarka Wood Company Limited in Tumaini, Nyandarua County.
For more than a century, Eucalyptus species have grown in Kenya, introduced by colonialists to power up the railway. This tree commonly referred to as Blue gum is native to Australia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Timor and to date a hundred species of this tree have been grown in Kenya.
It’s a tree that has diverse uses from fuel wood, timber, plywood, transmission poles, and pulp, to building materials, fencing posts, windbreaks and ornamentals.
According to the Kenya Forest Research Institute, a decade ago the total area covered by Eucalyptus trees was 100,000 hectares in public and private forests with 15 000 ha in gazetted forests; 35 000 ha on private land owned by large companies; and 50 000 ha land owned by individual farmers with the projection that these numbers would rise as the demand increases.
Over the last two years, Kenya has witnessed a rapid rise in timber manufacturing plants that are only processing veneers from eucalyptus trees by Chinese and Indian investors.
Dry cover
We came to Londiani in Kericho County after receiving a tip-off that truckloads of eucalyptus trees were moving in and out of this area on the Londiani-Muhoroni road.
Sheets of wood lined up to dry cover a large part of this open field. We are met by a Chinese man who speaks to us using an application that translates English into Chinese.
“What you want?” bellows the automated voice from his smartphone.
“Environment feature!” The fixer replies to the gadget, as the automated voice speaks back to him in Chinese.
He nods and signals for the policeman, armed with an AK-47 rifle, to escort us around the site. This site borders part of the Londiani forest, owned by the Kericho County government, which a Chinese investor, reportedly from Uganda, has leased for the duration of the processing of these veneers from eucalyptus trees.
On this day, the rains had stopped work on the consignment of eucalyptus trees brought in to be processed into veneer. On average, 18 lorries of logs from eucalyptus trees felled in other parts of the country can be processed in one day.
There is nothing permanent here, with a mobile office block and accommodation for the foreigners. The presence of the police, hired for security, speaks of the value of these veneers to the owners.
NTV reporter Brygettes Ngana with a manager from China-based Yans Wood Limited between rows of neatly arranged plywood in Gilgil, Nakuru County.
Every sheet peeled off a eucalyptus tree stump is for export, save for the waste in the form of barks, shaved rods and cut-off edges that can be bought by locals.
None of the foreigners we saw on this site could speak to us due to the language barrier and the owner of the site was not available. We were also informed that their translator was not around. These compacted sheets of eucalyptus veneers are ready for export and we understand that a consignment had left for the port in Mombasa.
Sites like Londiani are springing up all over the country, and our next stop is Ol Kalau in Nyandarua County, where Jimarka Wood Company Limited is telling passers-by and potential customers that it sells eucalyptus and pine all year round.
Inside, large warehouses have been put up to accommodate the bulk of trees that come in daily from farmers. They are of different shapes and sizes. And the suppliers work through an intricate channel of middlemen.
The recommended harvest age for eucalyptus trees by the Kenya Forest Research Institute depends on the intended use. For the production of rails and firewood, trees are harvested as young as 3 years for poles. Pulp is produced from trees that are 6-8 years old and trees used for power transmission are 10-12 years old. This is also the age at which the best veneers are produced; timber trees are harvested when they are 15 to 20 years old, and for plywood, the tree should be 20 to 25 years old.
Jimarka Wood Company Limited is a hive of activity, and this company even has a reward system for suppliers who bring the largest tonnage of eucalyptus trees. They say they produce plywood and blockboards from the thousands of veneers we see being air-dried. Even here, the owners declined to speak with us. There are two armed Police who serve as security as well.
As we drove out of Ol Kalau we noticed a truck loaded with wood products from Eucalyptus Veneers, this is Hontian Wood Limited, we tried to gain access to the premises but our request was denied.
Logs of Eucalyptus trees are well-arranged awaiting to be processed into plywood at Jimarka Wood Company Limited in Tumaini, Nyandarua County.
In Gitari, Gilgil, on the border of Nakuru and Nyandarua counties, a heavy goods vehicle is lying by the side of the road. A consignment of veneers from Yans Wood Limited, bound for Mombasa, was being unloaded from the truck, which had overturned a few metres from the factory due to the poor condition of the road.
Dennis Kipkoech, the translator, has been ordered by his Chinese bosses to take us through the sections of this factory that have been in operation for two years. His bosses claim they are not fluent in English.
White eucalyptus trees
“We buy red and white eucalyptus trees from farmers, what we produce, we export to China. It is a willing buyer and willing seller arrangement and on any given day we receive 10 trucks of logs that we can process on that same day,” explains Dennis.
I try to probe if they also plant trees to replenish the ones they are buying but he tells me that they do encourage the farmers to replant the trees.
“We are buying from everywhere and right now our source is from the Nyandarua region,” he adds.
Dennis lived in China for nearly a decade and when he came back he found an opportunity to work for this Chinese investor who initially ran a donkey abattoir in Turkana County until the government banned the slaughtering of donkeys. He says the number of Chinese investors in Kenya will increase in the coming years and that will offer opportunities for locals.
"The Chinese government is providing incentives for their citizens to work outside the country so for those of us who understand Mandarin which is the official language, we can work alongside them because most Kenyans do not speak or understand Chinese.”
The logs are the mainstay of this business on any given day 125 casual labourers will be here for work and their pay is pegged on the number of veneers they handle.
“During the rainy season, the workload is less so the workers make less money but our peak season is during the dry periods we usually get lots of trees, adds Dennis
Even here, the temporal nature of this business is evident. The owner and the Chinese employees have a self-contained living quarter on-site made of iron sheets. Everything can be brought down, packed and shipped away anytime.
Workers at the Jimarka Wood Company Limited plywood factory in Tumaini, Nyandarua County. The company is owned by Chinese nationals.
This is a concern for local timber Manufacturers like Njuguna Ng’ang’a, a saw miller in Nakuru who says the uncontrolled harvesting of eucalyptus trees in private farms will affect the local supply of eucalyptus for electric poles, fuel for industries. Unlike their foreign counterparts, local timber manufacturers take part in replenishing the trees they have harvested.
“The Chinese have been in the country for four years now. They were expelled in Uganda and Tanzania in 2023 and 2021 respectively because of the overexploitation of eucalyptus and other exotic trees in those countries. They are harvesting eucalyptus trees which are between 5 and 8 years old. These are young trees.
The Timber Manufacturers Association of Kenya is the umbrella body representing saw-millers and other industry stakeholders in the country who are resuming operations after a 6 year logging ban. Members like Daniel Kimani are alarmed that the rate of harvesting is not being supplemented by replanting.
“The Chinese and Indian investors are peeling on average 250- 300 tonnes of wood per day. They are distributed across the country and if we do not take precautions Kenya might be a desert sooner than we think.”
Marine boards
Njuguna and his colleagues suspect that the exportation of veneers as a raw material is a disservice to the timber industry since there is local capacity and potential to process the marine boards that are made using these veneers being exported to China. They also claim that the foreign investors are exporting the veneers under the guise that they are value-added thus evading tax
“There is no way they can pay 3000 shillings as merchant shipping cost for a 28-tonne container. We are required to pay 16 per cent tax for every item we process from the trees. The country is not cushioning us and this is exposing us to unfair competition because even if I go to China, the government there will not allow me to export raw materials.”
More so, treated Eucalyptus poles are very pivotal in the President’s Last Mile electricity connectivity agenda, and this too will be affected.
Chinese national using a forklift to transport plywood at Yans Wood Limited in Gilgil, Nakuru County.
“If this continues unchecked, we will be forced to import the very poles that we were sourcing locally for electricity transmission. The government should address this matter with the seriousness that it demands or else we have a crisis in waiting,” says Daniel
Other areas where Chinese and Indian nationals are processing eucalyptus veneers include Chepseon in Kericho County, Kongasis in Uasin Gishu County, Bungoma, Kisii, Isiolo Meru and Nyeri
The Kenya Association of Manufacturers has also expressed its reservations with the influx of eucalyptus veneer processors saying it will undo every effort the country is making to revive the timber manufacturing sector, and that the country is losing revenue that would have been injected back into the economy had the playing field been level.
“What I can verify based on the clearing documents that we have seen is that in the last 50 days, we have sent Sh1.2 billion worth of raw material which is not sufficient locally to foreign industries. The only line income the country has benefitted is merchant shipping cost that is Sh750,000,” explains Kaberia Kamencu the Chair of Timber, Wood and Furniture Sector at the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.
KAM was recently part of an emergency working group constituted by the Ministries of Environment and Trade and Industrialisation to address the complaints of the local timber manufacturers resulting in the issuance of a letter from the Kenya Forest Service dated July 13, 2023, sent out to all commandants by the Chief Conservator of Forests stopping the authorisation of eucalyptus veneers for export. However, KAM says the exports are still going on
“We recommended that the veneer exports need to stop. Why it is still going on your guess is as good as mine. It is criminal, and intentional sabotage of the 15 billion tree agenda,” adds Kaberia.
KAM is also concerned about the nature of employment at the veneer processing plants is unsustainable once the wood reserves are depleted
“These Indian and Chinese nationals are doing jobs Kenyans can do. In these factories, a Chinese person is driving a forklift and they do not even have a work permit.”
Three companies
The Nation got access to some of the exit permits showing the quantities of eucalyptus veneers that have been exported from the port of Mombasa to China between March and August by three companies. These companies are Feiteng Company Limited, Korna Hardware and Supplies Limited and Jinsen International Wood Industry Co. Limited
In that period these companies exported nearly 3000 tonnes of eucalyptus veneers with no value-added tax remitted since these consignments are being exported under the guise that they are value-added products from Kenya and so they are tax exempt. We then went further to look into the ownership of companies producing and exporting veneers and these are the findings.
Workers load eucalyptus logs into a plywood processing machine at Jimarka Wood Company Limited in Tumaini, Nyandarua County.
Korna Hardware and Supplies Limited is a company registered in Kenya on August 8, 2011, and the directors are Li Mingliang whose nationality has been withheld with 30 shares and Li Zhiwei a Chinese national with 70 shares, Jane Mwangangi has also been listed in Korna Hardware’s Memorandum of Association as the Company’s Secretary but her nationality too, has been withheld.
Feiteng Company Limited is also a company registered in Kenya on August 15, 2023, with Tinggang Song a Chinese national as the sole shareholder.
Honghui Investment Limited was registered on July 24, 2020, with two directors Lizzie Njenga a Kenyan with zero shares, with Hong Meixing a Chinese national having 1000 shares
Jimarka Wood Company Limited situated in Nyandarua County was registered in March 2023 and has two directors Huanjing Chen a Kenyan – Chinese with 450 shares while Zhijun Zhang another Kenyan – Chinese has 550 shares.
We asked Kipkoech Ng'etich, a Commercial lawyer to explain the dynamics that would allow for a listed company director to have no shares like in the case of Honghui Investment Limited.
“It means there is a problem in the manner in which that company was registered. It speaks of fraud and the Registrar of Companies should explain that. What would be the value of having a director who doesn’t have a share? I read mischief,”
A random search of the names of these directors online in these companies yielded inconclusive results, a preliminary indication of the shadowy nature of some companies conducting this veneer business.
The Kenya Forest Service is the custodian of all tree resources in the country. This is also the body that has been tasked to supervise and lead the implementation of the 15 billion tree-growing initiative as a climate adaptation and mitigation measure. The man at the helm of KFS as the Chief Conservator of Forests is Alex Lemarkoko a forester with more than 3 decades of experience, and is aware of the presence of foreign nationals who have invested in the country’s timber industry.
Tree products
“ The Asian countries provide a market for tree products and what is being harvested in Kenya is in the highland farmlands, where afforestation programs in the last 30 years have really been successful and these investors are buying directly from farmers or brokers,”
Lemarkoko insisted that no eucalyptus veneer has left the country since he issued the ban on KFS officials authorising the veneers for export as is required by law in June.
“We have already stopped issuing licenses for exports so we are not going to allow export until we develop the structures.”
But our findings show that between 1st and 6th August Jinsen International Wood Industry Co. Limited exported 2,243 tonnes of Eucalyptus veneers to China. KAM’s Kaberia Kamencu believes corruption could be fuelling the double speak from relevant government authorities.
“The foreigners saw weaknesses and they came in and took advantage. They are not legal businesses, from the outset for you to cut a tree you need a chief’s letter, you need a movement permit, you need a forester to come. There is a whole science to this and the ball has dropped on the national government. Right now as we are talking how many containers have left? We do not know?”
For Lemarkoko, the country is on course to attain the 15 billion tree cover by 2032 but it needs everyone on board.
“We need to rally other sectors of society behind this strategy. We are talking about women and the Youth. KFS has the capacity to enhance agroforestry. The most challenging part of this campaign is increasing tree cover in the Rangelands. We need to employ technology and include the pastoralist communities.”
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Economic Survey 2022 shows that Kenya made 199.8 billion shillings from the marketed production in forestry and logging. KNBS Data in 2024 indicates that sales of timber from Government forests increased from 37.8 thousand true cubic metres in 2022 to 159.4 thousand true cubic metres in 2023. With no mention of the status of trees in private farms.
In the meantime, local timber manufacturers say other exotic tree species are next in line for destruction as Chinese-run businesses gain access to planted government forests without following the due tendering process and the future of Kenya’s timber sector looks bleak.
