After best ever sales, Guwahati Tea Auction Centre sets new price record

GTAC breaks price record

ROOPAK GOSWAMI

The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre could not have asked for a better beginning to the New Year, with a broken orange pekoe (BOP) grade of CTC tea from Halmari tea garden fetching the highest-ever price of Rs 346 per kg. The tea was sold this morning at sale number 3 and was bought by Kamakhya Tea Trading, a Guwahati-based tea buyer, retailer and wholesaler. The GTAC is already in a euphoric mood this year, as it has broken all previous sale records when it sold 163.06 million kg of tea in 2013. “The best thing about Halmari tea is that it maintains constant quality throughout the year, unlike other Assam gardens. This is not the time for first flush or second flush but its quality is such that it commands such good prices,” Pijush Kanti Roy, proprietor of Kamakhya Tea Trading, told The Telegraph. The company bought 203.8kg of tea in lot number 4 of sale number 3 today. In 2012, Halmari tea sold for Rs 365 per kg in Calcutta and the garden has crossed the Rs 300 per kg mark many tim-es. Halmari tea was the best mark in the GTAC in 2012-13. Roy said the tea has a good combination of liquor and flavour. “The tea that we bought is for the Guwahati market. We have been buying Halmari tea for a number of years and get repeat orders,” he said. Procurement of Halmari tea for the Guwahati market is an indication that people here are looking to buy good tea. Lalit Jalan, another tea buyer, bought 15 bags of Halmari tea for the Guwahati market. “People want to buy good quality tea,” he said. Retailers add a 20 per cent margin when they sell the teas at shops. The 374-hectare garden is situated in Dibrugarh district and belongs to Calcutta-based Amarawati Tea Company Ltd, which also owns the Duliabam Tea Estate. Its teas have been fetching high prices for many years now and it ranks among the top gardens in the state. The tea that was sold today was produced in mid-December last year. “The Halmari tea factory produced 8.5 lakh kg of tea last year, which will increase to 10 lakh kg of tea in a few years of time. The increase will come from contribution by young teas planted in the last five to six years,” a source said. A number of steps have been taken by the Tea Board of India to improve the quality of Indian tea. An important step was setting up two tea councils, one for South India and one for the north, in order to monitor the quality of tea meant for export and for imported teas meant for re-export. eom