Licences of 18 biofertilizer units and instant tea factories cancelled

Units accused of supplying tea waste to tea manufacturers as adulterant

The Tea Board India’s Zonal Office in Coonoor has cancelled the licences of 18 biofertilizer units and instant tea factories.

The cancellation comes in the wake of allegations that the biofertilizer units were procuring “tea waste,” and supplying it to tea manufacturers as an adulterant

Tea waste is described as “tea sweepings, tea fluff, tea fibre or tea stalks or any article purporting to be tea which does not confirm to the specification for tea laid down under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act,1954 (37 of 1954), has been used to adulterate tea.

“The instant tea manufacturing units and biofertilizer units use tea waste as their raw material…of late, it was observed that some of the instant tea manufacturers and biofertilizer units were not exactly adhering to the norms and conditions,” a statement from the Tea Board in Coonoor said.

Licences had been granted to at least 15 companies to procure tea waste for use in their biofertilizer plants. However, an RTI application revealed that many of these companies had failed to acquire permits to even run any such facilities, raising serious questions as to whether the tea waste was instead being procured by these companies and sold to tea manufacturers as an adulterant. Executive Director of the Tea Board, Coonoor, M. Balaji, in a press release, said that the 18 biofertilizer units and instant tea factories that had their licences cancelled had failed to maintain “proper accounts in respect of purchase of tea waste, transaction details, purchase of other ingredients, sale of biofertilizers, its disposal etc.”

The Tea Board has also stated that the licence of one instant tea manufacturing company has been suspended due to their non-operation for the last few years and non-compliance of terms and conditions.

In addition, three instant tea manufacturing companies have been issued with advisory notices to follow the stipulations laid down under Tea Marketing Control Orders.

Tea Board officials had inspected the units in February 2020 and had served show-cause notices on 22 units for deviations reported during the inspection. Following this action, the licences of 18 units were cancelled.