Tea Board to bring small tea growers under one umbrella

The new e-auction platform will giver better return for the growers

The Tea Board of India is planning to integrate small tea growers in different parts of the country, by bringing them in one platform, which will allow them to auction what they cultivated.

R Ambalavanan, executive director, TEA Board of India, which comes under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, said that the new platform will be ready in another three to four months, which act as pan-India auction system.

The platform will enable the small time growers, who are part of six socities in Coonor, Coimbatore, Kochi, Kolkata, Guwathi and Silguri (Darjeeling).

He added, this platform will allow the tea growers to acces better and wider buyers and price realisation will also be good.

According to Ambalavanan, the tea growers who are part of the six societies last year produced and sold about a billion kilos of tea.

He noted, across the country about 1200 million kgs of teas are sold, of which around 48-50% are being e-auctioned and the TEA Board wants it to increase to 60-70%.

"We are trying to educate all the small farmers about the benefits of such systems," said Ambalavanan, adding that the challenge is to convience them to have uniform policy, bid size, base amount, lot size and others.

He added, the entire project is funded by the Board, with technical assistance from NSE.IT in Mumbai.

Earlier speaking at the launch function of new brand from the house of Glendale Estate, Ambalavanan called the Tea exporters to focus more on domestic markets, rather than exports.

On Tea production, he said, in North India the production is down by around 2-3%, which will be covered in the next 2-3 months. In South India, production levels are in higher side, due to climate and other reasons.