The Hindu Business Line : Organic tea project may take off this year

Finer points
The Tea Board will receive from CFC a sum of $9,00,000 as loan repayable over seven years.
Three model firms, each of 100 acres, will be set up in Assam, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata, July 10 The project to develop organic black tea, with funding from the Amsterdam-based Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), a UN body, is set to take off in the current year itself, according to Tea Board sources.

Under the project, the Tea Board will receive from CFC a sum of $9,00,000 as loan repayable over seven years and another $6,00,000 as grant. The formal agreement between the Union Government, which will be the guarantor to the loan, the Tea Board and CFC will be signed during the course of the year.

Model firms

Three model firms, each of 100 acres, will be set up in Assam (near Tinsukia in Upper Assam), West Bengal (Darjeeling district) and Tamil Nadu (tea growing areas in Annamalais hill range of the Western Ghat). The technical support will be provided by Tocklai tea research station in Assam, Tea Board’s research centre in Darjeeling and Upasi Tea Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu.

“We’ve identified the owners keen to offer their lands for the model firms to take up production of organic tea on an experimental basis,” said the sources, pointing out that part of the fund to be received from CFC would be made available to them as loans.

While CFC would charge from the Tea Board at the prevailing LIBOR, the owners of the model firms availing themselves of the funds would be required to cough up a little more. “We’ll have to factor in the impact of the probable fluctuations in LIBOR as well parity rates between the Indian rupee and the dollar”, says the sources.

Organic tea project

The thrust of the CFC-funded organic black tea project will be to standardise the organic tea growing practices through proper technical support, assess the market and determine the demand to establish its commercial viability and to have a proper certification procedure.

Right now, some organic tea is produced in Darjeeling district but, as the sources point out, not in a very systematic way.

CFC is also supporting a similar project in China for the development of organic green tea, the sources add.