The Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) has deployed special refrigerated wagons to boost the transportation of perishable goods on key routes linking the Mombasa port.
The first rolling stock of 50 refrigerated containers, also known as reefer wagons, left the Naivasha Inland Container Depot on Wednesday with horticultural produce for shipment to the Mombasa port.
KRC Managing Director Philip Mainga said it plans to deploy more than 500 reefer wagons in the next three months.
“Perishables can now be collected from fresh produce consolidation centres, transported via rail to the Port of Mombasa for onward transportation via sea to Europe and other destinations,” he said.
Refrigerated containers are used for goods that require temperature controls during shipping. The special containers are equipped with a refrigeration unit plugged into an electrical source at a depot, terminal, or on board a vessel.
The containers mainly ship fruits and vegetables, meat, fish (fresh or frozen), milk and dairy products, flowers, pharmaceuticals, juice and concentrate and chocolate.
The KRC move comes even as the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) provided special facilities, including charging points and lanes to support refrigerated container users.
The KPA has installed 1,300 charging points along the Naivasha to Mombasa railway line to woo more horticulture exporters.
KPA Managing Director Capt William Ruto said 795 charging points have been installed in Mombasa, 336 in Nairobi, 216 in Lamu, and 20 in Naivasha.
“We’ve been receiving fresh produce from Tanzania and other parts of the country.
“The demand made us increase plugging points. In handling these fresh produce, shippers of containerised perishable produce are granted priority to land in all our entry gates,” he said.
The move comes as horticulture exporters in Kenya are increasingly compelled to transport produce by sea and not air freight to cut their carbon footprint and not air freight as consumers and retailers in the main EU market aggressively pushed for products with lower carbon emissions.
Key retailers in Europe, which buy the largest share of Kenya’s fresh produce, have imposed restrictions on the transportation of the produce by air in favour of sea transport.
Several giant retailers in the bloc, including Lidl have cut back on air freight to source stocks such as fresh fruit and vegetables for their stores—a measure aimed at reducing the carbon emissions associated with the transport of fresh produce.
The refrigerated containers also come as a relief to horticulture dealers currently inconvenienced by a decision by several airlines to suspend their flights from Kenya.
Horticulture remains a main forex earner for Kenya even though the value of exports declined by 12.7 percent in 2024, mainly hurt by transportation hitches on the key Red Sea route where cargo ships are regularly targeted by militants linked to the Houthi group.
A report by the Agriculture Ministry said that the value of horticulture exports reduced to Sh137 billion last year, marking a decline of Sh20 billion from Sh157 billion exported in 2023.
The Ministry said that ships carrying cut flowers, fresh fruits, and vegetables destined for Europe were rerouted to the South Africa route due to the volatile situation in the Red Sea.
