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Jayanta Mallick

Kolkata , Dec. 15

ITC plans to re-enter the tea business through its international business division. Mr S. Shivakumar, CEO of the division, told Business Line here today that the company was poised to venture into organic Darjeeling tea exports.

"Earlier, we had experimented with marketing and exports of certain varieties of tea but later exited that business . This time, we plan to restrict ourselves to organic Darjeeling tea," Mr Shivakumar said.

ITC exports a basket of agro products to 35 countries. Exports of agro products constitute around 9 per cent of its total revenue. ITC is rapidly expanding its export basket to ensure acceleration in turnover growth from non-tobacco businesses.

The company is negotiating with a Kolkata-based tea producer for sourcing its supplies of organic Darjeeling tea variety. "As organic Darjeeling tea cultivation is not very widespread among farmers, we need to source it from a supplier who remains consistent in terms of quality," Mr Shivakumar added. He said that ITC's tea venture would be independent of its e-choupal platform.

Though sourced from a manufacturer with an established organic tea brand, ITC will export this new item under its own brand banner. Organic Darjeeling tea has a growing niche market and often fetches a premium as high as 100 per cent over the ordinary Darjeeling tea in Europe and Japan and very few companies are engaged in the organic Darjeeling tea business. Incidentally, tea would be the second export item for ITC from West Bengal, shrimps being the first.

In terms of procuring new products from West Bengal, ITC was looking at non-basmati rice and organic fruits such pineapple seriously, Mr Shivakumar said.

Tie-up with BPCL: He said ITC had tied up with Bharat Petroleum for enabling it to market petroleum products on its e-choupal platform in the rural sector. "In some 95 hubs of the e-choupal systems in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Bharat Petroleum is in the process of setting up fuel stations this month only. Shell would sell its lubricants through these stations".

This follows use of e-choupal infrastructure by TVS for selling its motorcycles and by Eicher for its tractors recently. The ITC e-choupal facilitates two-way movement of products/services from and into rural India.

Two of the four national futures commodity exchanges are in the process of tying up with ITC for using its agro infrastructure such as warehouses, product data base, technology gateway and quality certification for certain commodities like spices, coffee and soyabeans.

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