The Tea Board India has initiated multiple steps to facilitate quick movement of tea within the system — from garden to consumers —by reducing the turnaround time at every step.

The board, in a circular on Tuesday, said in view of the Covid-19 outbreak, tea gardens and manufacturing units across the country has witnessed a stop in production for the past month.

“Activities in the garden and the production of tea in manufacturing units have started as per direction of the government in all the tea-growing regions. In view of restrictions, maintenance of social distancing norms and the fact that the industry has to function with 50 per cent of available labour force (25 per cent in Bengal) output from the gardens may fall further,” it stated.

The board said the industry will face a loss of 115-120 million kg tea during the initial period of lockdown.

It said it has become necessary on the part of the industry and the board to initiate certain steps which will help minimise and prevent further loss to the industry as well as maintain sufficient cash flow in the system.

“This can only be achieved by facilitating quick movement of teas within the system, that is from garden to consumers by reducing the turnaround time at every step,” it stated.

Since auctions are always considered as the primary mode of marketing teas, the tea board has proposed certain steps to be implemented across all auction centres, subject to permission from respective state governments with regard of movement of teas, functioning of warehouses and others.

A tea producer in Upper Assam said it takes five weeks for him to get his money back for the teas sold in auctions.

The board said there should be sufficient reduction of turnaround time with regard to arrival of teas at the warehouses for auction sale. “This will help in improving cash flow of the manufacturers and will also encourage manufacturers to offer more teas in the auction, thereby increasing healthy competition in the auction ecosystem which, in turn, will result in determination of fair price of teas,” it added.

Another step is facilitation of faster sampling and cataloguing of teas after arrival at warehouses.

The circular said another step could be doing away with printing and distribution of hard copy catalogues since digital catalogues are already available in the auction portal, which can be easily accessed by the buyers.

“To avoid disruptions of cash flow during this critical time, prompts for teas once sold shall not be deferred,” it said, asking auction centres to intimate it of the steps taken.

The last date of payment of the bills to the broker is 13th day from the date of auction, called buyer’s prompt date and the brokers pay the value of teas to the sellers on 14th day from the date of auction, which is called seller’s prompt date.

“For this to happen, there has to be an agreement among the stakeholders,” an industry official said.