There is a massive reduction in the volume offered for Sale No: 46 of the auctions of Coonoor Tea Trade Association to be held on Thursday and Friday. A volume of 17.09 lakh kg has been catalogued. It is as much as 4.23 lakh kg less than the offer for the previous auction. Besides, it is the lowest volume of the past seven months, the previous low being 15.05 lakh kg offered on April 23.
“Prolonged wet weather with inadequate sunshine hours has affected the growth of bushes. Added to this, the festival season caused a shortage of labour. Collectively, the harvest was tellingly low resulting in a reduced supply of green leaf to the factories for processing and eventually affecting the factory production. We have suffered about 40 per cent reduction in production,” L Vairavan, planter and tea manufacturer in Erinkadu near Coonoor, told BusinessLine .
Tea proportions
Of the 17.09 lakh kg offered for this week’s auctions, as much as 15.90 lakh kg belongs to CTC variety and only 1.19 lakh kg orthodox variety. The proportion of orthodox teas continues to be low in both leaf and dust grades. On the leaf tea counter, only 87,000 kg belongs to orthodox while 12.05 lakh kg, CTC. Among the dust tea, only 32,000 kg belongs to orthodox while 3.85 lakh kg, CTC. In all, 12.92 lakh kg belongs to leaf grades and 4.17 lakh kg to dust grades.
Two grades of bought leaf factory Homedale Tea factory, auctioned by Global Tea Auctioneers Pvt Ltd (GTAPL), topped the entire auctions last week beating even the export-oriented orthodox teas from corporates.
Homedale Pekoe Dust grade, auctioned by GTAPL, topped when Tea Services India Pvt Ltd bought it for ₹325 a kg. Homedale Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings grade, auctioned by GTAPL, topped the leaf tea auctions fetching ₹306. These were the only grades that crossed ₹300/kg. Among other CTC teas, Cross Estate Premium got ₹280, Pinewood Estate got ₹250 and Vigneshwar Estate got ₹210.
Quotations with the brokers indicated ₹70-74 a kg for plain leaf grades and ₹136-159 for the best grades. For plain dust grades, they ranged ₹61-70 and for the best grades, it was ₹145-175.