North Bengal Tea Producers' Association

About Us

With the recommendation of the Lammond Committee in the mid sixties that the Indian tea production should rise to 1000 million Kilograms from it’s the then level of 350 million Kilograms if India was to meet its domestic demand as well as maintain the level of exports, a target that was later revised to 1400 million Kilograms, we did not foresee the advent of what we now call the “Tea Rush” where tea companies large and small, individuals affluent or otherwise, pineapple growers etc went into a spree of land purchase for future planting of tea. Even small cultivator succumbed to this conversion of agricultural land to Tea cultivation.

This exercise change the entire social economic dynamic of the region and it has taken all of two decades for this Tsunami to settle down.

What followed was natural with the establishment of our manufacturing facilities. We are now strength of 94 Factories including 4 in Bihar contributing 80 to 85 million kilograms of Tea which is not less then 30% of the total Tea production of this area of 230 million kilograms.

Our Factories has been established with a large capital investment and like any commercial enterprise can only survive if there is profitability and this may at times be a cause of conflict of interest with our suppliers of raw materials. The Tea Board of India has been aware of this and had worked out a price sharing formula that is fair and equitable. The standard of the leaf that would be supplier to and accepted by the bought leaf factories was also quantified, but with such a large numbers of small growers spread over a vast area and with limited resources available there could not be adequate emphasis on the standardization of the quality of the Green Leaf ot its monitoring, in the field.

India has already lost some of her pre-eminent positioned suppliers to the World tea drinkers, If only we can produce quality tea in all segment of tea production, we can regain back our position.