Tea e-auction sales cross 1 billion kgs

Kolkata, Dec 27 (IBNS) Tea e-auction sales have crossed 1 billion kgs in India, said the government on Tuesday.

"The cumulative sale of tea-across the six e-auction centres exceeded one billion kilograms (100 crore kgs.) on December 22, 2011. Thus the remarkable journey of Indian tea auctions for over 150 year crossed yet another milestone," said a government statement on Tuesday.

India is the first country in the world to introduce e-auction in primary marketing of tea. E-auctions in the present form were introduced by Tea Board of India in April 2009 with Coonoor auction centre.

After extensive discussions with the stakeholders of the tea industry the e-auction application was rolled out in December 2008.

"A series of mock e-auctions and trainings were conducted and a mammoth change in management process was initiated to convince the stakeholders who were used to manual auctions for over 150 years," said the government.

Tea Board moved with caution as the earlier attempts to introduce e-auctions in 2002 had failed.

With the stakeholders by and large embracing the e-auction system, a series of new and innovative features were introduced and within a short time in November 2009 over 100 million kgs of tea were sold.

"This by itself was a remarkable achievement as theGovernment had not imposed any compulsion to the industry to sell teas through the e-auctions. Soon stakeholders ensured that100% of all teas sold in the six auctions centres were through e-auctions and today only Darjeeling teas go through the manual auction route in Kolkata."

Tea Board said it plans to roll out e-auctions for tea waste, bulk tea and package tea in the near future.

"The one billion kilogram milestone has provided sufficient impetus to all the stakeholders to use the e-auction platform for selling / buying all of the approximately 980 million kgs of tea produced annually, of which about 50% are coming to the auctions at present," said the government.