Tea production has increased by eight per cent in the 10 months of current calendar over last year and has crossed one-billion-kg mark, reveals our analysis of the latest data available with the Tea Board and the traders’ bodies.
“Production till October has risen to 1,028.68 mkg from 952.45 mkg last year. In October, the country produced 22.62 mkg more than Oct 2012 to reach 167.11 mkg”, Rajesh Gupta of ‘Global Tea Digest 2013’ told Business Line .
Tea output crossed one billion kg for the first time in 2011 when it reached 1.116 billion kg. It rose to 1,126 billion kg last year.
Now, for the third consecutive year, production has exceeded a billion kg mark.
“We expect the production to be a record of about 1.25 billion kg this year”, said Upasi’s past President D. Hegde.
The increase of 76.23 mkg marks a growth of eight per cent.
North India posted an increase of 76.39 mkg to reach 832.91 mkg.
Assam continued to top production table at 542.10 mkg (up 33.53 mkg). West Bengal produced 269.87 mkg (up 36.81 mkg).
South India’s production fell marginally by 0.16 mkg to total 195.77 mkg.
Here, Tamil Nadu produced 1.81 mkg more to reach 141.96 mkg while Kerala lost 1.7 mkg to dip to 49.44 mkg. Karnataka also lost marginally.