Marginal increase in tea output seen

November 2017 was a bad month for North Indian tea plantations where adverse weather pulled down production heavily. “Tea Board has now released the production data for November as per which, India’s output fell to 118.90 million kg (mkg) from 128.94 mkg in November 2016. This decline of 10.04 mkg marked a loss of 7.79 per cent”, Rajesh Gupta, compiler of Global Tea Digest 2017, told Business Line.

This happened because North Indian production decreased by 11.39 mkg to dip to 98.35 mkg and South Indian output rose by 1.35 mkg to reach 20.55 mkg.

In the recent years, India’s production has been posting new records year after year. Till August also, the country was hoping to post another record output this year, but in September, weather pulled down North Indian production heavily crashing the hope of another record output in 2017. October brought in new hopes and November continued to maintain it marginally, thanks to better situation in South Indian plantations.

“Our compilation shows that in the 11 months, India’s production has increased to 1208.77 mkg from 1203.36 mkg. This increase of 5.41 mkg marks a marginal growth of 0.45 per cent”, Rajesh Gupta said.

North Indian overall output till November dropped to 992.58 mkg from 1006.29 mkg. On the contrary, South Indian output increased to 216.19 mkg from 197.07 mkg.

Assam continued to top the country’s production table at 625.54 mkg, but it was less by 18.63 mkg over 2016.

In the South, Tamil Nadu produced 154.01 mkg (up 18.21 mkg) and Kerala 57.28 mkg (up 1.05 mkg).

If this trend had continued in December, the country would produce an all-time high output of around 1,272 mkg, industry sources predict.