Tea Board India will install solar power plants in all estates across the country to produce quality and chemical-free tea, its deputy chairman Arun Kumar Ray said on Wednesday.

“At present, the tea industry is using coal to manufacture tea. In view of the environment, we are thinking of transforming this process into solar power and electricity. This will ensure that the tea produced is free from all types of pollution. The demand of Indian tea is very high in other countries and they would not like to consume chemicals with their tea. We are planning and finalising how we can set up solar power plants to reduce the cost of the factories and improve the quality of tea,” he told The Telegraph.

Ray, Tripura Tea Development Corporation chairman Santosh Saha, education minister Ratan Lal Nath, deputy director Joydeep Biswas, gymnast Dipa Karmakar and Tea Board assistant director (tea development) Diganta Barman inaugurated the Run for India Tea marathon on Wednesday to promote and spread awareness about the beverage.

The marathon started from Birchandra State Library here at 7am and the runners, after criss-crossing the city, returned to the starting point. A colourful tableau was also taken out.

Ray said small tea growers can produce quality tea in the coming days. “To improve productivity of small tea growers, we have taken a series of initiatives. Recently, we took up a project of Rs 120 crore to increase and to develop the standard of small tea growers. In future, they will produce quality tea and we can export it internationally in an organic way,” he said.

He said under the Look East policy of the Centre, Northeast, will be an export hub of organic products and tea will play a crucial role.

“Across the world, the consumption of organic and orthodox tea is increasing. Through the medium-term framework (MTF) programme for the next three years, we will replant trees only in organic and orthodox gardens. Around 110 million kg of orthodox tea was produced earlier and last year it increased to 135 million kg. So, our produce is increasingly shifting to orthodox production,” Ray said.

Asked about hike in wages of tea workers, Ray said a new labour code is under formulation and very soon the state government will notify the new wages.

On Tripura tea, Ray said it was increasing production like the rest of the tea-producing areas.

“We will put up Tripura tea in the cloud-based auction system. Tripura tea earlier had to be taken to Calcutta or Guwahati for auction. We have tied up with m-Junction for online auction. The company is using an innovative e-platform, which will improve turnaround time and cost-effectiveness. There will be more buyers and sellers, reduced transaction cost, automated catalogue management system and other new features to improve price discovery,” he said.