High Cliff Tea factory, a small-scale bought tea leaf factory, located in a small hamlet called Kengarai in The Nilgiris district created a hat-trick by topping the entire South Indian auctions for the third consecutive week.

“At Sale No: 34 of the auctions of Coonoor Tea Trade Association (CTTA), two grades of High Cliff Speciality orthodox teas were bought by Nisha Enterprises each at ₹400 a kg for export to the US,” Ravichandran Broos, General Manager of Paramount Tea Marketing, who auctioned these teas, told BusinessLine.

“This was the highest price not only in Coonoor auction but the entire South India this week for any tea, orthodox or CTC, from any factory, corporate or small-scale,” he said.

“This is the fourth time our teas have entered ₹400/kg mark in the last one month but hat-trick has been recorded because of three consecutive topping. We manufactured these teas for ‘The Golden Leaf India Award: Southern Tea Competition’, an initiative of Tea Board and UPASI in which we bagged two coveted titles,” High Cliff’s Managing Director B Rajesh Chander said.

“This is the highest price fetched by these grades of our teas in regular auctions since manufacturing started in 1984 in our Hittakkal group to which High Cliff belongs,” he pointed out.

“We are happy that we have fetched record prices in South Indian regular weekly auctions for eight of our grades within seven months of our converting our factory into exclusive orthodox tea manufacturing unit,” he noted.

Another small-scale bought leaf factory Homedale Tea Industry located in Coonoor emerged as the only one to fetch over ₹300/kg and hence top the entire CTTA auctions after High Cliff.

“In the CTC market, Homedale Estate’s Pekoe Dust grade, auctioned by Global Tea Brokers, topped when we bought it for ₹301 a kg,” G Thiagarajan, Proprietor, Shree Abirami Enterprises, said.

“We bought this for the use of discerning connoisseurs in The Nilgiris who prefer its unique flavour and taste. We are selling it as a single-factory grade without any blend to retain its originality,” he noted.

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