Tea Board fixes price for farmers at 87% more than last year

The Tea Board has fixed the average price of the green leaf at ₹23.26 a kg for December in The Nilgiris district.

This means, bought leaf factories buying small growers’ green leaf, which they use as raw material for processing into manufactured tea, have to pay not less than this price this month.

Tea Board’s Executive Director, M Balaji, said that all bought leaf tea factories have been instructed to pay this price and all factory officers of the Board have been instructed to ensure that factories in their jurisdiction have paid at least the minimum price in December.

He said that this price has been fixed based on the consolidated average sale price fetched by the relevant teas in the auctions last month. This price is marginally less than the price fixed for November by 66 paise per kg.

Nevertheless, it is far higher than the price of ₹12.45 a kg fixed for December 2019. That means, compared to last year, growers will get a whopping ₹ 10.85 per kg or 86.63 per cent more.

Considering that four kgs of green leaf are generally bought by factories to produce one kg of manufactured tea, for every kg of manufactured tea, the growers will now get about ₹ 44 more than what they got this time last year.