The auctions of Coonoor Tea Trade Association (CTTA) for 2022 begin on Thursday but on the new platform called ‘Bharath Auction’ replacing the hitherto conducted ‘English auction’.

Among the major changes in the ‘Bharath Auction’ module relate to bidding logic, reserve price, bid history and price rediscovery session.

Tea Board is excited over the success of the ‘Bharath Auction’ which it launched for the Kochi auctions on Tuesday.

“We have announced ‘Bharath Auction’ model to begin with the first auction in 2022 in South India – Kochi, Coonoor, Coimbatore and Teaserve. Accordingly, it was rolled out in Kochi on Tuesday and there was overwhelming welcome to it. In effect, this model directly addressed to solve the issue of clogging of demand and hence the price in the value-chain. This helped better price recovery by stopping the cartelisation to clog bids. We foresee price and demand stabilisation in the months to come”, Tea Board’s Executive Director for South M Balaji told BusinessLine .

“In fact, we are recommending the ‘Bharath Auction’ model for other commodities including coffee, spices, fishery and some non-agro products as well. This gives tea trade a good start in 2022 and serves as a fit model for emulation by other commodities”, he disclosed.

For the first auction of 2022, a volume of 16.94 lakh kg has been catalogued. This is as much as 1.42 lakh kg less than the last auction of 2021 held a fortnight ago. “The attack of blister blight disease on tea leaves has brought down the harvest and hence the manufactured tea and the arrival to the auctions. Besides, with the villages engaged in celebrating a local festival, small growers and workers had not been harvesting tea leaves”, S Ramu, Chairman, Small Tea Growers’ Association of Southern India (STASI) said.

Of the 16.94 lakh kg offered for this week’s auctions, as much as 15.96 lakh kg belongs to CTC variety and only 98,000 kg orthodox variety. The proportion of orthodox teas continues to be low in both leaf and dust grades. In the leaf tea counter, only 76,000 kg belongs to orthodox while 12.87 lakh kg, CTC. Among the dust tea, only 22,000 kg belongs to orthodox while 3.09 lakh kg, CTC. In all, 13.63 lakh kg belongs to Leaf grades and 3.31 lakh kg, Dust grades.

CTTA is entering 2022 auctions having created an all-time price high in the last auction for 2021 when Homedale’s CTC Pekoe Dust grade, auctioned by Global Tea Auctioneers Pvt Ltd., (GTAPL) was bought by Devesh Kayal (OPC) Private Ltd for ₹392 a kg. In CTC Leaf auctions, two grades of Crosshill Estate tea, auctioned by GTAPL, topped fetching ₹291 a kg each. Among other CTC teas, Pinewood Estate got ₹235, Vigneshwar Estate ₹226, Shanthi Supreme ₹214, Riverside Estate ₹211, Bellatti Estate ₹204 and Bathma Excel ₹203.

Quotations with the brokers indicated ₹75-81 a kg for plain Leaf grades and ₹161-181 for the best grades. For plain Dust grades, they ranged ₹70-83 and for the best grades, ₹157-211.

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