The Kenyan government through the ministry of energy formed a special purpose vehicle - Geothermal Development Company (GDC) to play a key role in enhancing the geothermal resources. One of the key areas of focus in the direct utilization of geothermal energy has been greenhouse heating, milk naturalization, drying of cereals among many others. For a decade, Kenya has been ranked number one among the largest exporters of black tea in the world after china. In the year 2019 alone, Kenya exported a total of 497 million kilograms of black tea. Averagely, this accounts for 20% of the world tea exports. Despite these facts the Kenyan farmer has not enjoyed the benefits accrued from farming the crop. Since independence, tea sectors boosts of being the leading foreign exchange earner for Kenya. Currently, the cost of production and the energy requirements for processing tea accounts for 40%. This paper analyses the viability of providing cheaper energy to the sector for processing tea especially fermentation and drying process at the proposed industrial economic park. This study focused on utilization of excess thermal energy from the three power plants to be installed at the Menengai project by independent power producers. A comparative analysis was done using other alternative sources of fuel for tea processing like Industrial diesel oil, electricity and firewood. This paper critically examined the cost / benefit analysis using Return on Equity, Return on Asset and Return on Investment. Although Tea Production cost is projected to be reduced by more than 20% thus saving the industry hundreds of millions shillings annually GDC will also benefit greatly through sales of steam to the Economic Industrial Parks as an extra stream of revenue. This is purely and innovation to a sustainable project management using a symbiotic approach. Based on the findings of the study, this paper recommends for designing and testing of a prototype tea drier using thermal energy.
Keywords: Tea Processing, Excess Thermal Energy, Economic Industrial Parks

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