On entering by the security gate, visitors are welcomed by a smart uniformed guard saluting you. It is immediately clear how well organised, clean and tidy the site is with white lined trees, immaculate edges, freshly cut grass and colourful flower beds. The whole complex is vastly different from when it was taken over into Imporient ownership back in November 2004 from government control. Some 150 people are employed on site working eight-hour shifts, day and night.

In the last two and a half years over a million US$ have been invested in the plant and the difference has been immeasurable in providing not only a superb factory capable of seriously increasing green leaf production, but also introducing new employment and improved infrastructure to the area and bringing well being into the local community. Workers children now live in a secure community and schooling is now provided - although at a cost.

The tea estate covers almost 800 square kilometers, and there are millions of manicured tea bushes, carefully cultivated and each one plucked every eight or nine days. After each picking the leaves are carefully carried to a weighing station where the morning's collection is weighed and recorded so that payment can be made. In the afternoon, the morning's green leaf harvest is taken to the factory.

Quality is paramount and each sector has a specialist inspector called an Agronomist who checks each area of plantation as well as the picked leaves. Each of nine sectors is run by a cooperative, all working together. Each plucker is paid an incentive for gathering the best leaf. The aim of the inspectors is to ensure that at least 70 per cent of the plucked leaf meets the top grade of P+2. Pfunda achieves this status regularly with average tea plantations only gaining around 60 per cent.

Lorries arrive at the factory packed high with sacks of green leaf. A quality inspector checks each sack again before it goes onto a monorail that takes the bags to the withering troughs, where the leaf is hand rolled into huge troughs where over a period of 16 to 18 hours the moisture content of the leaf is reduced by 30 per cent. This is achieved by fanning air under the mesh on which the green leaf rests. When the quality inspector is satisfied, the trough is emptied and the leaves taken down by conveyor to the cutting rooms.

Again, quality is key and the leaves are passed through a sifter that removes any foreign objects such as gravel from the tea leaves, before they enter the four CTC (cut, tear and curl) machines. The Pfunda tea factory is unique in that, unlike other tea producers in Rwanda who only use three cuts, it uses four, enabling a gentler cut to be made at each stage while also ensuring a superior quality cut is obtained before the leaf moves to the fermentation stage.

It depends heavily on the weather conditions as to how long the fermentation process takes and how much air is used to cool the oxidising leaf. This ‘push-pull' process, as it is called, allows the air to turn the finely cut leaf from bright green to a bright golden brown. Once this process is complete the fermented leaves go through a ‘ball breaker' that removes any lumps before the leaf enters the dryer, which is heated to between 145 and 155 degrees. This arrests the oxidation process and ensures the quality is captured in a way that allows it to be kept for a reasonable period of time. The tea is now black in appearance and referred to as ‘made tea'. As it leaves the dryer it is at its very best and will only deteriorate over time. It is therefore important to get the tea to market and into consumers' cups as soon as possible.

The warm air radiators and the dryers are all heated by steam, generated by a huge wood boiler. This consumes vast quantities of eucalyptus, the best natural and sustainable material as it is grown locally on the estate especially for the process. Eucalyptus is an extremely fast growing tree with a tree being mature in only six years.

After drying the richly coloured and fragrant leaf is sorted into different sized grades. Sorting machines also ensure that any stalk or tea dust is removed from the ‘dryer mouth' tea. This cleaning process makes sure that the tea is now of the highest quality in terms of taste, texture and aroma.

Grades are accumulated and then packed. As it is vital that the whole batch tastes the same, quality control samples are taken for checking at each stage of the packing process.

The final graded tea is put through special hoppers and into four ply alufoil lined sacks that are used to transport the tea to the Imporient warehouse at Mombasa - a 10-day journey from Rwanda - for onward delivery to clients.

The Pfunda tea factory is absolutely spotless. During the whole process from field to sack, there can be no smells, bacteria or any type of foreign matter in the area as they could immediately ruin the whole day's production. At the end of every shift, all the withering troughs, cutting machines, and fermenting trolleys are washed out, cleaned and then made ready for the next shift.

The factory is totally self-sufficient with repair shops and maintenance gangs - every conceivable piece of machinery is maintained on site and, where required, rebuilt within their own workshops. In order to ensure that the cutting process is maintained at the highest level, each of the CTC rollers are removed and go through a five-hour re-sharpening process to keep the blades in first class condition.

The factory has made a major impact on the local community since 2004. Where the buildings were in a poor condition, many workers lived in makeshift tents and there was hardly any sanitisation or toilets, today huge investment has gone into rebuilding the site and installing new machinery. Staff housing is being renovated as well as the surrounding area that will eventually see open spaces created for vegetable patches, gardens and a children's play park. The old canteen is being re-furbished to guest quarters and even a basketball pitch has been created to provide some after-work leisure activities.

At Mombasa, Imporient's offices are across the street from the warehouse. They contain not only all the administration teams and the shipping clerks but also the tasting rooms where upwards of 300 different blends of tea are tasted each day.

The massive warehouse stores all the teas waiting to be exported to countries including the UK, Egypt, Russia, Pakistan and the Middle East. Apart from storage, the warehouse also provides cover for the blending of the various teas that go into different brands. Each day, teams of men blend the tea by hand - something that has been done for centuries and continues to this day because blending by machine simply does not get the same quality results.

Quality control still doesn't stop here at the factory. Once the goods are fully packed and delivered into the port, the whole consignment undergoes final random testing at the Ports Authority Public Health department before finally being loaded on route for the UK and Coffee Point's distribution centres.

The whole process from picking of leaf to delivery to Coffee Point is around a month ensuring true freshness. Other tea producers are said to average three months from picking to final destination.

Noel Orphanage

Opposite the Pfunda Tea Factory is the Noel Orphanage, housing 634 children ranging from babies to 18 years of age. The genocide years took their toll on the ‘lost children of Rwanda', with many of them severely disabled and mentally ill and confined to living in institutions around the country.

The Noel Orphanage is currently funded by the Catholic Church to the tune of around £120,000 per annum but this funding will stop in September this year, creating a disastrous situation in which the children, many of whom know no other life outside of the orphanage, have no where to go if it closes down. Immediate funding and help is required if they are to have a future. It costs just 54p a day to house, school and feed each child as well as provide medical supplies.

Coffee Point which already supports orphanages in South Africa as well as a school in Zwa Zulu Natal, is now to add the Noel Orphanage to its list of projects.

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