Goodricke aims at 25% growth in packet tea

Goodricke Group Limited is looking at a 25 per cent growth in its packet tea production to reach 10 million kgs by 2017-18, a top company official said on Thursday.

"This year (2015-16) our production for packet tea was 8 million kg. At present, we are looking to spend in excess of Rs 10 crore in packet tea in FY17, mainly on marketing. However, this will go up later," said company's Managing Director and CEO Arun Narain Singh.

Addressing shareholders in the 40th annual general meeting, Group's Chairman P J Field said, "The branded tea business showed excellent results with volume growth of 11 per cent and value growth of 12 per cent over the previous year."

The company is also looking to acquire tea gardens in Assam. "We are looking to acquire one or two more gardens in Assam. Land in Assam is still viable and there is a lot of opportunity in the export market for both CTC and orthodox tea," said Singh.

At present, the tea producer has two gardens in Assam, three estates in Darjeeling and 12 gardens in Dooars.

The tea producer is also focusing on the instant tea market globally.

"This category (Instant tea) has been doing reasonably well lately. We have entered countries like China, South Korea and Japan and have plans to expand in the south-east Asian region," Singh said on the sidelines of the meeting.

According to him, it manufactures about 5-6 lakh kg of instant tea annually in a plant in Dooars of Bengal and the company plans to increase plant's production capacity by 10-15 per cent.

Total manufactured crop of the company in 2015-16 fell 1.13 per cent to 21.84 million kg from 22.09 million kg produced in the previous year due to severe drought in the early part of the year.

--IANS

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