Tea major Goodricke Group Ltd, in which Camellia Plc, UK, holds 74 per cent stake, is looking for suitable gardens in Assam for acquisition.

“There is no other way we can hope to make any significant addition to our present capacity,” Arun N. Singh, Managing Director and CEO of Goodricke Group, told Business Line here recently. 

The company has under it 30 gardens – eight in Darjeeling, 10 in Assam and 12 in Dooars – together producing 28/29 million kg of made tea. Another five mkg of bought leaf are processed in the company’s factories, thus bringing the total production of made tea to around 33/34 mkg. Replantation and rejuvenation of bushes did not help much achieve a major breakthrough in production.

Goodricke has been undertaking replantation and rejuvenation for the past several years and nearly 20 per cent of the total tea growing areas of 6,000 hectares has already been covered. “We did not wait for SPTF (Special Purpose Tea Fund introduced by Tea Board to encourage replantation and rejuvenation among tea growers) to come into force,” he said.

The gardens which Goodricke is targeting for acquisition must produce at least one million kg of made tea annually, if not more.  “For us, one mkg production is the minimum economic size,” Singh said.

However, not much progress had been made though a few gardens were identified, he added.

One major stumbling block had been the price. The tea prices currently being virtually on fire, the sellers are asking for a hefty price. “Perhaps we may have to wait for the market to cool down a bit,” Singh observed.  “Also, we want gardens in close proximity, not scattered over wide areas.”

Packet tea and instant tea are the two businesses which are receiving a good deal of attention of the company’s management. “Right now we sell about eight mkg of packet tea annually, up from six mkg two years ago and our target is to push it up to around 12 mkg by 2015,” he said.

The Instant tea business, a 100 per cent export business, though launched in 1995, virtually remained dormant for several  years, only to pick up in the past couple of years. The capacity is about 5.5 lakh kg annually but the current business size is estimated at two lakh kgs or so. “We would like to achieve full capacity at the earliest,” he added.

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