The Tea Board has set an ambitious target to export 300 million kilogrammes of tea by 2025, a jump of nearly 50 per cent from last year.

India is hoping to achieve this by tapping new countries and filling up the vacuum created by Sri Lanka in the global market.

Under the leadership of newly appointed Tea Board chairman Sourav Pahari, the board is also looking at a generic promotion of the beverage within the country to increase per capita consumption of tea from 750 gm to 1 kg a year.

“Our focus is both on exports and domestic and the Tea Board’s function will now mainly be promotions with the new Tea Act which is expected to be tabled in the monsoon session of Parliament,” Pahari said.

Export stats

India exported about 195.5 million kg of tea in 2021 with the pandemic induced disruptions, falling from 252.2 million kg it recorded in 2019. This year the target has been set at 240 million kg.

“Our production of orthodox tea is enough to take care of the vacuum left behind by Sri Lanka. But the only problem at the moment is the payment problem due to the current international situation. There are freight and shipping problems too. If these can be eased I think India is quite capable of filling the gap that Sri Lanka has left behind,” Pahari said at the occasion of International Tea Day, jointly organised by the Tea Board and India Tea Association.

The chairman asked the tea industry to come out of their comfort zones and explore new markets other than CIS countries and Iran, the two major export markets for India. “We have not aggressively targeted North America, Western Europe, Canada, South Korea,” he added.

Domestic market

The Tea Board is in the process of making a vision document 2030 and a draft plan has been submitted with the commerce ministry.

Industry participants say the focus of the planters should be on producing quality tea. “There is always demand for good quality tea in the domestic and export market and we focus on that as an organisation too,” said ITA vice chairman and Goodricke managing director Atul Asthana.

ITA chairperson Nayantara Palchoudhuri said there is a growing demand for sustainable tea globally.

The chairman of the Tea Board said tea must be made trendy and appeal to the younger generation.

“There is a massive need for the industry to understand that the market is not what it used to be. Consumer preferences have changed. There is a younger lot which is now the consumer base who perhaps doesn’t know tea the way the older generation knew,” he said.