How to verify a Kenyan flower supplier: what you can actually check, and what proves nothing

Start here, because the framing matters

Most of what a new supplier tells you is unverifiable, and that is normal in international trade rather than sinister. Capacity, reliability, relationships with farms, quality standards — these are commercial claims. You test them with small orders and time.

But three things are independently checkable, cheaply, by you — and in the research behind this site, remarkably few buyers appear to use them. They are worth more than any amount of reassurance.

A fourth category matters just as much: things that look like proof and are not.

1. Does the company legally exist, and who owns it?

This is the strongest, cheapest and most decisive check available, and it takes minutes.

Kenya's Business Registration Service is the official registry of Kenyan companies, accessed through the government's eCitizen portal. An official search — commonly called a CR12 — returns:

• the company's registered name and number
• its date of registration
• its registered office
• its nominal share capital
• its directors and shareholders

The fee is KES 650 — a few US dollars. Records already verified in the system are generated on payment; others can take a few business days.

Source: Business Registration Service fee schedule and official-search guidance, read 25 September 2026.

Consider the asymmetry. A buyer preparing to wire a five-figure sum to a counterparty they have never met can establish, for less than the cost of lunch, whether that company legally exists and who actually owns it. If a supplier is reluctant to give you the registered name and company number needed to run that search, you have learned something useful.

What it does not tell you. Legal existence is not solvency, capability or honesty. A registered company can still fail to deliver. It establishes who you are dealing with — which is the floor, not the ceiling.

2. Is it licensed to export horticultural produce at all?

A company can legally exist and still not be licensed to do this. The two are separate questions, and the second is rarely asked.

Who licenses it. The Agriculture and Food Authority is a state corporation established under the Agriculture and Food Authority Act No. 13 of 2013, regulating the production, processing and marketing of scheduled crops under the First Schedule of the Crops Act No. 16 of 2013. Horticulture sits with its Horticultural Crops Directorate.

What the licence costs, which tells you what kind of thing it is. 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. These are annual standing credentials, not per-consignment paperwork — which is why an exporter either has them or does not, and why "we are applying" is a meaningful answer rather than a delay.

Where they come from. Licences are applied for and renewed through AFA's IMIS portal, which the Authority describes as letting traders importing and exporting crops obtain regulatory documents remotely rather than by attending the agency, and which integrates with the Kentrade trade facilitation platform and the eCitizen payment system.

And here is the limit, which matters more than the rest. We located no public register that lets you verify a named exporter's licence independently. IMIS is a portal for the licence holder, not a lookup for their customers. So an export licence is a document you request and read — it is not a fact you can confirm from outside, and it belongs in the same category as everything in section 5 below: useful, and not proof on its own.

What to ask for, then: the licence number, the licence year and the expiry, and the pack house registration if the flowers are packed by the same company. A current licence names a period. One quoted without one is worth asking about again.

One thing the regulator itself does not currently make checkable. The Horticultural Crops Directorate's own service pages link to its KS 1758 code of practice at a subdomain that does not resolve — no DNS record at all, re-checked on 25 September 2026, while the Authority's main site responds normally. That is not a criticism dressed as a finding; it is the reason this site takes no position on whether KS 1758 is mandatory. The certification position is set out here.

3. Is the phytosanitary certificate genuine?

What every field of the certificate must contain → What an exporter can show you about where a box came from, and what has no public register →

There are two ways to check, and the second is far stronger.

The paper certificate carries security features. Kenya's phytosanitary certificate uses numbering designed to resist alteration, silver holographic foil incorporating the KEPHIS logo, and watermarked KEPHIS logos. A flat PDF scan showing none of these is not proof of forgery — but it is a fair reason to ask questions.

The electronic route is the real answer. Under the IPPC ePhyto Solution, a phytosanitary certificate moves electronically from the exporting country's plant protection organisation to the importing country's, through a central hub. The data is authenticated by the issuing authority, and that authentication carries the legal equivalent of the officer's signature and seal. The IPPC's stated purpose includes preventing the fraudulent certificates that paper allows.

The instruction that follows is simple, and this research did not find it on any competitor page:

Ask whether the consignment will move on ePhyto, and confirm with your own national plant health authority that they have received it.

A certificate you are emailed is a claim. A certificate your own regulator has received through the IPPC hub is a fact.

For what the certificate does and does not attest — and why it cannot be obtained retrospectively — see the phytosanitary page.

4. Are you paying the company you think you are paying?

This is where the largest single losses in international trade occur, and it is not specific to flowers.

Invoice-redirection fraud works by substituting bank details — often mid-transaction, often with a plausible message explaining that the supplier's banking has changed.

Two rules, and they are not negotiable:

• Confirm bank details through a channel you initiated, using contact details you already held — never details supplied in the email carrying the invoice.
• Check the beneficiary name against the legal entity name from the company search in step 1. A mismatch between the trading name and the account holder deserves an explanation before any payment, not after.

Treat any mid-transaction change of banking instructions as a stop condition, however ordinary the explanation sounds. Verify it by voice, on a number you already had.

5. What looks like proof and is not

This category deserves its own heading because these things are routinely offered as proof.

None of these is worthless — consignment photographs against a dated reference are genuinely useful if a condition dispute arises later. They evidence that product exists, not who controls it. Keep the two questions apart.

A sensible order to do this in

1. Before you quote-shop: ask for registered name and company number. A supplier who will not give them has answered a different, more useful question.
2. Before you commit: run the official search. Read the directors.
3. Before you commit, and in the same conversation: ask for the AFA export licence number, its year and its expiry, and the pack house registration if the same company packs. Neither can be verified against a public register, so read the documents and note the dates.
4. Before you pay: confirm banking by a channel you initiated, against the registered entity name.
5. Before the consignment moves: ask whether it will travel on ePhyto, and tell your own plant health authority to expect it.
6. On arrival: photograph against a dated reference if anything is disputed.