The Tea Board’s proposed move to take a tea delegation to China is getting an enthusiastic response from tea trade and industry.
With signs of thaw in the relationship between both the countries after the meetings between Premier Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there is widespread feeling that the timing is now right for mounting a delegation to China. The proposed visit, the first in recent times, is being scheduled in July.
The activities that have been proposed are meeting the Chinese authorities, participating in buyer-seller interactions as well as tea-sampling. Enquiries revealed that nearly 50 tea-companies — traders and exporters, have shown their interest to be part of this delegation — the contours of which are yet to be finalised.
While India and China are among the top tea producers in the world, until recently there was little common ground between the two as China’s estimated output of 2,300 million kg comprised, mainly green tea while India is a predominant black tea producer producing around 1200 million kg annually.
“Chinese youth are now preferring black teas and black tea based beverages,” an industry source said. “There are complementarities between the two countries as regards their tea consumption habits and this will be a good initiative,” according to Tea Board Chairman P K Bezbaruah.
China imported 6.4 million kg of black tea from India in the first 10 months of 2017 valued at Rs 115 crores. The unit price of this was Rs 180.8, which was in the higher price band. India imports a similar amount of green tea from China.
