How a Kenyan consignment is exported: KEPHIS, AFA, the pack house and JKIA, in order

The order matters, and it starts at the destination

KEPHIS certifies against the importing country's rules. The exporter must first establish what the destination requires — which pests it regulates, which additional declaration it wants on the certificate, whether it requires a treatment — and only then work backwards to the farm. Compliance cannot be retrofitted to a consignment. If the destination's requirement needed an inspection while the crop was in the ground, the pack house cannot create it afterwards. What KEPHIS attests, and the sequence that decides whether you can be supplied at all →

1. The exporter's standing credentials

The Agriculture and Food Authority, through its Horticultural Crops Directorate, licenses the export of horticultural produce. Under the Crops (Horticultural Crops) Regulations the export licence fee is KES 10,000 a year and pack house registration is KES 5,000 a year — annual standing credentials, not per-consignment paperwork, applied for and renewed through the Authority's IMIS portal. The same Regulations apply an export levy of 0.25% of customs value per consignment on horticultural crops destined for export.

What a buyer can verify: the licence number, the licence year and its expiry, and the pack house registration if the same company packs. There is no public register on which to check them, so they are documents you request and read, not facts you can confirm from outside. How to verify a Kenyan supplier, step by step →

2. The growing-period inspection

KEPHIS runs farm export certification from regional offices near the growing areas — Naivasha, Nakuru, Embu and Kisumu. That is the growing-period inspection: the crop is inspected against the destination's requirements while it is in the field, and the certificate that follows attests to that. For a destination with a pest requirement — Great Britain and the European Union on the false codling moth, Australia on devitalisation — this is the step on which the certificate depends. Naivasha, where one of those offices sits →

What a buyer can verify: not the inspection itself, but the question that reveals whether it happened — was the crop inspected against this destination's requirement, and when? A supplier who understands the difference answers immediately. One who does not offers to obtain a certificate.

3. Harvest, grading and the pack house

Grading is where a Kenyan regulatory term and a trade term are most often confused. KEPHIS checks at the exit point that a consignment is properly graded — size, colour, shape — and publishes no grade scale with named tiers. So "properly graded" is a regulated inspection criterion with an indicative definition, and "Grade A" or "A1" is whatever the seller means by it, or a Dutch auction convention. What the rose specification actually consists of →

The pack house is where the box is built, and the box is the unit a quotation is built from — stems per bunch, bunches per box, boxes per pallet, and the chargeable weight that follows. Why a quotation starts with a box →

4. The exit point: JKIA, and eight standards

KEPHIS operates import and export controls, grading and inspection at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, at Mombasa and Eldoret airports, at Mombasa port and at border points. At exit it states that it checks eight standards: freedom from pests and pest damage; freedom from diseases and disease damage; maximum residue level compliance; no physiological disorders; properly graded; no excessive moisture; whole, with no mechanical damage; and packaging that is clearly labelled, clean and well ventilated. Inspection intensity is not uniform — visual, microscopic or both, depending on the assessed risk of the commodity.

What a buyer can verify: nothing at the airport, and everything on the certificate — because the certificate is the record of this step.

5. The certificate, and what it costs

The phytosanitary certificate for fresh produce is KES 500, under the Plant Protection (Fees and Charges) Rules. Fresh-produce inspection is charged at 50 cents per kilogram, with a minimum of KES 100, plus KES 500 per certificate; inspection at the Nairobi exit point is KES 1,000; and agricultural export products carry a charge of KES 5,000 per consignment declared for export. These are gazetted statutory fees, cross-checked against a High Court judgment that quotes them independently — and they are the floor, not the cost of exporting. The fee schedule in full, and why a circulated PDF of it gives wrong figures →

The certificate can travel electronically. Under the IPPC's ePhyto exchange a certificate moves from the exporting country's plant protection organisation to the importing country's through a central hub, and that authentication is the legal equivalent of the officer's signature and seal. Ask whether the consignment will move on ePhyto, and tell your own plant health authority to expect it.

What it costs at origin, listed once

Kenyan statutory charges as read from Kenya Law's consolidated texts. None of this is freight, handling, clearance or the destination's charges. What the destination borders charge, and how differently each behaves →

What happens next is the destination's

From the moment the aircraft leaves, the sequence belongs to the importing country: Great Britain wants notice on IPAFFS of at least four working hours before an air consignment lands and a certificate issued inside its 13-day window; the Netherlands checks the additional declarations before it opens anything; Australia checks the treatment statement against BICON. The certificate rules at the British border → What actually stops Kenyan consignments, ranked →

What to ask, in the order the process runs

1. Which destination requirements was the crop inspected against, and when?
2. What is the AFA export licence number, year and expiry, and the pack house registration?
3. Who issues the certificate, will it move on ePhyto, and which additional declaration will it carry?
4. How is the box built — stems per bunch, bunches per box — because that, not the stem, is what the quotation prices.