Ctta Readies Auction Blueprint
Following the announcement of the new norms relating to tea sampling and the subsequent problems at the auctions, the Calcutta Tea Traders' Association (CTTA) comprising 1,400 buyers, sellers and brokers is formalising its suggestions, which will be submitted to Tea Board chairman S Ahuja this week.
The changes have been announced on free trade samples, size of samples and division of lots by Tea Board on April 24, following which sale 19 at the Calcutta auctions could not take place as scheduled as buyers were unhappy with the new norms. Even at the sale 18, held on May 2, CTC and dust varieties of tea were unsold, while only orthodox and Darjeeling saw export buying.
A meeting was then held between Ahuja and CTTA on this issue on May 9 and Ahuja has agreed to place CTTA's suggestions before the board for consideration.
CTTA secretary J Kalyana Sundaram said, "CTTA wishes to hold auction in a normal manner. We have already had a series of discussions among ourselves and we will try to see that no section is adversely affected."
However, the last two auctions - sale 19, which was rescheduled on May 15, and sale 20, held on May 15 and 16, were carried on peacefully. Under the revised norms, the buyers will now have to buy more tea for qualifying for free trade samples. The qualifying limit has been raised by 25 per cent for CTC, 50 per cent for orthodox, 33 per cent for Darjeeling and 16 per cent for dust.
As for the size of samples, the small sample holders used to get 30 gm packs as samples per lot, medium ones 60 gm and large ones 90 gm per lot. Now, as per the new norms, the small sample holders will get 25 gm as samples per lot, medium ones 50 gm and large ones 75 gm per lot for CTC and dust. For the orthodox variety, the small category has remained unchanged, while the medium ones will get 50 gm and large ones 75 gm in one lot. In case of Darjeeling tea, the medium category no longer exists. The small buyers will buy 30 gm and the medium and large will buy 75 gm per lot.
The new norms in the division of lots entail that lots upto 19 packages will be indivisible between two buyers. There should be minimum of 10 packages in a division.
The opposition, hence, also stems from the fact that variety available to the buyers gets reduced, who will now not be able to put more variety in their blends owing to the revised norms. "Hence there has been curtailment of buying opportunity to some extent," sources said.