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Tea Board has suspended the registration certificate of two estate factories (large factories) and has issued appropriate advisory notices to as many as 98 such other factories across South India.
Tea Board’s Executive Director M Balaji said that this arose out of the Board’s South Zonal Office inspecting the working of these factories.
“We have been undertaking regulatory measures to ensure the quality of the manufactured tea. We have also been closely monitoring the sample checking by the auctioneers and quantity offered in the auction platform besides the various statutory returns filed by the stakeholders, including buyers. Substantial efforts have been taken to contain adulteration and excess use of tea waste in the final products”, he said.
“Over 140 notices to bought-leaf factories (small-scale factories) and 30 notices to tea waste processing units have been issued. Of them, 46 licenses have been suspended so far”, he disclosed.
“As part of this effort, we inspected estate factories across the southern region. Based on the findings, we issued show cause notices to 100 estate owned factories for various shortcoming including lack of quality leaf procurement, average/poor hygiene standards, non-production of records pertaining to sale, holding of tea waste beyond permissible level, procurement of bought leaf beyond the permissible limit; purchase of teas from other factories, non adherence to price sharing formula and excess usage of re-conditioned teas in production without matching green leaf”, he explained.
“Of the above, based on the gravity of the deviations and after providing an opportunity of being heard, appropriate advisory notices had been issued to 98 estate factories”, he noted.
Balaji further said, “The registration certificates of two estate factories in Valparai region have been suspended due to abnormal usage of re-conditioned teas in their production without green leaf, non-submission of records pertaining to sale, transfer/sale of teas to unregistered buyer/other tea factories as also purchase and possession of huge quantity of unauthorised tea stocks in the factory”.
These deviations are treated as violations of the applicable provision of the Tea (Marketing) Control Order 2003.
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