Tea Board initiates separate platform for Assam Tea

Tea Board has taken the initiative to float a separate electronic auction platform at Jorhat to cater to the Assam tea cluster for developing an innovative e-market place, an official said.

The platform would also be facilitated with associated services like central warehousing and logistics, he said.

Deputy chairman of Tea Board A K Ray said that the proposed e-marketplace, to be developed by Mjunction Services, was also expected to bring on board secondary and tertiary buyers from all over the country.

Ray said the Tea Board had also consulted IIM, Bangalore, for certain policy reforms in respect of e- auctioning.

He said that big companies had been affected due to rise in the production volumes of small growers due to their huge cost structure.

"Increase in production due to small growers was causing problems for the big companies having huge cost structure and subsequently facing liquidity problems", Ray told reporters here on Monday.

He said that Tea Board had also decided to allow exports of tea waste which was not permitted till now.

"By allowing this, ten to 20 million kilos could easily be added to the exports basket of Indian tea", he said.

This, he added, would also reduce the availability of poor qualilty tea in the market.

This calendar, Tea Board has fixed the export target at 260 million kilograms.