diff --git a/monasca_common/kafka/producer.py b/monasca_common/kafka/producer.py
index a2fd636e..a389dedb 100644
--- a/monasca_common/kafka/producer.py
+++ b/monasca_common/kafka/producer.py
@@ -40,22 +40,13 @@ class KafkaProducer(object):
         """Takes messages and puts them on the supplied kafka topic
         """
 
-        # Using a key producer to make sure we can distribute messages evenly
-        # across all partitions.  In the kafka-python library, as of version
-        # 0.9.2, it doesn't support sending message batches for keyed
-        # producers.  Batching writes to kafka is important for performance so
-        # we have to work around this limitation.  Using the _next_partition
-        # function allows us to get proper distribution and the speed of the
-        # send_messages function.
-
         if not isinstance(messages, list):
             messages = [messages]
 
         try:
             if key is None:
-                key = time.time() * 1000
-            partition = self._producer._next_partition(topic, key)
-            self._producer.send_messages(topic, partition, *messages)
+                key = int(time.time() * 1000)
+            self._producer.send_messages(topic, str(key), *messages)
         except Exception:
             log.exception('Error publishing to {} topic.'.format(topic))
             raise