The demand for new season orthodox (traditional) tea has started from overseas buyers. India benefited from last year’s economic crisis in Sri Lanka, the world’s largest producer of traditional tea. Its prices were touching the highest level ever. Will the situation be the same this year as well? The industry is studying on this. Traditional tea is produced after traditional methods such as plucking, withering, rolling, oxidation and drying. Recently, the first consignment of traditional tea was auctioned in Kolkata. It opened well with an average price of Rs 245.65 per kg. This price is 30 percent more than last year. Himanshu Shah, chairman of MK Shah Exports, one of the country’s largest traditional tea producers, says, “We are talking to consuming countries and they are showing interest. Russia is facing shortage right now, but they want to buy tea at a reasonable price. Iran which usually buys premium second flush and that comes in the market after June. “There is also a very high demand for Indian tea in Sri Lanka due to low production and we do not see any drop in demand till August,” he added. Sri Lanka trades around 50 per cent of traditional tea globally. But, the crisis-hit island country has seen a decline of 15 to 17 per cent in the year 2022 on an annual basis. According to the information available on the website of Tea Exporters Association Sri Lanka, exports from January to December stood at only 250 million kg. This is 12.6 percent less on an annual basis. It opened doors of opportunity for India. Usually Iraq, Turkey, Russia, UAE and Iran are the top five buyers of Sri Lanka. Some of these are also major markets for India. These include UAE, Russia, Iran, Iraq. According to the Tea Board of India provisional export data, these countries accounted for 52.42 per cent of the country’s total tea exports during January to December last year. In the year 2021, this share was 44.55 percent. The UAE, a major re-export hub, took the top spot with a 146 per cent increase. But, it is also known that in the top two tea consuming regions of the world namely CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and MENA (West Asia and North Africa), tea from different regions is blended and packaged from Dubai itself. Overall, India’s tea exports increased by 15.49 per cent to 226.9 million kg during January to December 2022. However, the Tea Board of India says that the increase in Indian tea exports is not entirely due to the situation in Sri Lanka, as Sri Lanka will continue to account for 14 per cent of global exports even in 2022. The board attributed the growth in exports to the addition of new markets such as Malaysia, Ireland and Turkey along with old ones. However, the industry attributes this growth to the conditions in Sri Lanka. Now the big question is that even if Sri Lanka recovers from this crisis, will Indian manufacturers still be able to maintain this momentum? But the answer to this will also depend on when Sri Lanka will recover from its loss. Sri Lanka’s production in January and February this year was 37.9 million kg. It is as low as 30 lakh kg. Exports of 36.1 million kg saw lower exports of 4.42 million kg due to low purchases in Russia, UAE and Iraq. Shah pointed out, ‘Once the tea bushes suffer a blow, it is difficult to recover the lost crop without proper effort.’ At least this has happened in Darjeeling. There was a 107-day bandh in the year 2017 during the Gorkhaland agitation, since then it has been struggling till now. Irrespective of Sri Lanka’s position, India needs to establish itself as a reliable supplier of traditional tea in the global market. “Traditional tea has a major share in the global tea market and it is also important to increase the production of traditional tea to increase exports,” said Arijit Raha, secretary general of the Tea Association of India. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′; n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0); s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’, ‘ fbq(‘init’, ‘550264998751686’); fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);