Kenya’s manufacturers risk ceding ground in global markets if they do not adopt modern packaging standards, industry leaders warned at the 10th Propak East Africa Expo in Nairobi this week, as East Africa’s packaging sector expands on the back of FMCG growth, urbanisation, and rising intra-African trade under AfCFTA.
- Matthew Kipchumba, Director at the State Department of Trade, called for world-class packaging to be embedded in national trade strategies, arguing it is central to ensuring Kenyan products can compete on international shelves and meet compliance requirements in export markets.
- Joseph Nyongesa, CEO of the Institute of Packaging Professionals Kenya, stressed that packaging innovation must balance sustainability requirements with long-term trade competitiveness.
- Angela Kinyua, Managing Director of Montgomery Group East Africa, said deeper coordination between manufacturers, suppliers, and regulators is essential to advancing the sector over the next decade.
- The three-day expo drew more than 5,000 participants from over 35 countries, spanning packaging, printing, plastics, and processing, making it the largest edition in the event’s 10-year history.
Kenya’s packaging sector sits at the intersection of several converging pressures: tightening import standards in the EU and Gulf markets that are major destinations for Kenyan horticulture and food exports, growing domestic FMCG consumption requiring more sophisticated formats, and AfCFTA rules of origin requirements that reward value-added production. Propak East Africa has become a key platform for linking local manufacturers with global technology providers, and the scale of this year’s edition signals rising private sector appetite to upgrade.
The Bigger Picture: Packaging is a proxy for industrial maturity. Kenya’s export base, anchored in tea, cut flowers, coffee, and horticulture, is highly vulnerable to rejection at the border over labelling, contamination, or shelf-life failures caused by inadequate packaging. As regional competitors invest in processing capacity, the gap between countries that package to global standards and those that do not will increasingly determine who captures value in African agricultural supply chains. The government’s recognition of packaging as a trade strategy issue, not just a logistics detail, is the right framing.
Source: Capital FM Business
