With the volume offered for Sale No: 35 of the auctions of Coonoor Tea Trade Association being four-month low and reports floating of reduced volume being catalogued for coming weeks in view of adverse weather pulling down field harvest, upcountry buyers and exporters showed interest to build up possible stocks.

Reduced volume and increased demand pushed up the average price to ₹94.93 a kg — the highest of the last two months. However, the rising price caused hesitancy among the buyers to pick up high-priced teas. Exporters were selective and preferred medium-priced teas.

Consequently, the volume sold dropped to 16.85 lakh kg – the lowest in a month. This pulled down the overall earnings, despite the unit price rise, to ₹14.87 crore – the lowest in the last one month. It meant that the overall earnings crashed by ₹1.91 crore or 11.38 per cent in just one week.

A bought-leaf factory Homedale Tea Factory created a new price record. “Our CTC Red Dust grade, auctioned by Global Tea Auctioneers Pvt Ltd., (GTAPL) topped the entire auctions when Badhusha Tea Co., bought it for ₹ 371 a kg. This is the highest price fetched by this grade ever since manufacturing started in our factory 72 years ago”, Homedale’s Managing partner Raman Menon told BusinessLine .

This was the only tea, CTC or orthodox from bought-leaf or corporate sector, which crossed ₹ 300/kg mark this week.

The Red Dust grade of Crosshill Estate Premium, auctioned by GTAPL, fetched ₹ 226. Among other CTC teas, Vigneshwar Estate and Pinewood Estate got ₹ 216 each and Deepika Supreme ₹ 201. In the orthodox tea auction, Chamraj got ₹ 277, Kodanad ₹ 259 and Kairbetta ₹ 226.

Overall, nearly 88 per cent of the offer was sold.

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