KOLKATA: If you’ve been thinking your morning cup of tea has been tasting rather listless of late, you have good reason. The tea bushes that dot
the gardens throughout the country, especially Assam and Darjeeling, which account for the bulk of the liquor and flavour you are so accustomed to, have not been replaced...for over a century!
Thankfully for you tea drinkers, that’s going to change.
Buoyed by improved fortunes after a 10-year chill, the industry is now desperate to replace the tea bushes, the average productive lifespan of which is 50 years. Money is being ploughed back to plant new saplings across thousands of acres, an exercise will take months to complete.
This is because all the bushes in a tea garden cannot be uprooted at the same time as that would halt production completely. New saplings take time to grow and therefore, the replanting has to be done strategically, in phases.
Companies including McLeod Russel, Goodricke, Warren Tea, Dhunseri Tea, Rossell Tea, Gillanders Arbuthnot & Co and Amalgamated Plantations, among others, are undertaking massive replantation exercise to upgrade the quality of their tea.
“It takes at least five to six years for a tea sapling to grow into a full-fledged tea bush. The financial health of the industry in the last decade has not been robust enough to undertake replantation. Barring a few big companies, most of them have so long been unwilling to invest in their gardens. Now that finances are improving, most Indian tea companies, big or small, are going in for massive replantation,” said Sujit Patra, joint secretary of the Indian Tea Association (ITA). Generally, gardens uproot and replant 2.5% of the tea estate every five to six years.
The sweeping change augurs well for the future of Indian tea, which sells some 210 million kg in export markets besides 740 million kg within the country.
Under pressure from all this is the Tocklai Tea Research
Centre in Jorhat, Assam. The oldest and largest research station of its kind in the world, TRA has been flooded with orders for new saplings over the last six months. “By March 2010, we will have to supply some 10 lakh saplings to the industry. This is a huge jump from the 4 lakh saplings we supplied in 2008-09. The replanting spree has caught on in most gardens across Assam, the Dooars-Terai and Darjeeling,” TRA chairman CS Bedi said.
The Tocklai Tea Research Centre in Jorhat, Assam, is feeling the heat. It is the oldest and largest research station of its kind in the world and carries out research on all aspects of tea cultivation and research under the Tea Research Association (TRA), which is a registered co-operative society dedicated to scientific research and extension for improvement in productivity and quality of tea in the North East (NE) India.
Over the past six months, TRA has been flooded with orders for new saplings. Talking to ET, CS Bedi, chairman, TRA, said: “By March 2010, we
will have to supply some 10 lakh saplings to the industry. This is a huge jump from 4 lakh saplings that we supplied in 2008-09. The replanting spree has caught on in most gardens across Assam, the Dooars-Terai and Darjeeling.” In fact, gardens in South India have also started replacing their ageing tea bushes in a phased manner.
It is suddenly as if the entire spectrum of Indian tea gardens is undergoing a metamorphosis and the significance of it stretches far beyond what can be instantly measured. Tea bushes have hardly ever been replaced nationally on a largescale basis. There are umpteen number of gardens which continue to pluck tea from bushes that are nearly 150 years old. The industry had, by and large, side-tracked the expenses involved in replanting during the last tea boom in 1998.
Now, the industry is willing to do what has long been left undone. With both domestic and international buyers becoming more discerning and other frontline producing countries like Kenya and Sri Lanka having drastically improved the quality of their tea, the tea garden owners in India have started realising that the exercise cannot be kept indefinitely pending any longer.
Replantation cost in North Indian gardens is Rs 3.03 lakh per hectare, compared to Rs 5 lakh per hectare in South India. The productive life of a tea bush is 50 years. Assam has 3,00,000 hectares under tea plantation. The Dooars, Terai and Darjeeling tea estates together cover an area of 1,14,000 hectares.
South Indian gardens are spread over some 1,22,000 hectares. Of the total 5,36,000 hectares that is under tea, nearly 2,12,000 hectares are planted with bushes well over 50 years of age. In comparison, Sri Lankan tea bushes are a little over 30 years old, while Kenyan tea bushes are much younger.
Companies like McLeod Russel, Goodricke, Warren Tea, Dhunseri Tea, Rossell Tea, Gillanders Arbuthnot, Amalgamated Plantations and others have undertaken massive replantation exercise to upgrade the tea quality.
“The financial health of the industry in the last decade has not been robust enough. Barring a few big companies, most of them have so long been unwilling to invest in their gardens. Now that the finances are improving, most companies, big or small, are going in for massive replantation,” said Sujit Patra, joint secretary of the Indian Tea Association (ITA).
“Those planters, who had quietly invested in replantation over a period of time, are now reaping the benefit of it. In this boom year, their normal CTC (crush, tear, curl) teas are fetching Rs 140 per kg, while those who didn’t invest in replantation, are getting only about Rs 120 per kg for their teas,” said a Kolkata tea trader.
The Centre has also come up with a Rs 4,200-crore special purpose tea fund (SPTF) to encourage planters to undertake replantation. Initially, the response towards SPTF was lukewarm. But in recent months, planters — mostly from North India — have started accessing the SPTF.
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