Luxury Darjeeling tea gets good price BEGINNING WITH A BANG

Speciality or luxury tea producers among the Darjeeling plantations had a good start to the year, as the prices in private sales went upward.

Compared to the normal Darjeeling tea, which sells at ~700-1,500 a kg for whole leaf and ~300-500 a kg for the broken and fanning variety, speciality teas, considered as luxury items, normally sell at ~6,000-14,000 a kg.

Makaibari Tea Estates was able to craft five kg of luxury tea from its Kurseong plantation, which sold for ~19,365 a kg ($302) in a private sale, its best price realisation from the first flush (first plucking of a plant's harvest season) until now. Goodricke Group was able to sell 20 kg of white tip luxury tea from its Badamtam plantation at ~12,900 a kg. Namring Tea Estate, owned by the Poddar Group, was able to increase its price realisation from luxury tea by 10 per cent this year at ~11,000 a kg.

Glenburn Exotic got ~10,000 a kilo for a 24 kg lot, while Rohini Tea Estate —Darjeeling’s youngest garden — fetched nearly ~5,500 a kilo for a 48 kg lot it sold in a private sale. Sugato Dutt, a director at Subodh Brothers, a luxury tea exporter to America, Europe and Japan, opined the increase this year was primarily due to the weather in March. “The rains were erratic during the first flush, which affected the crops, resulting in loss of estimated volume. As a very limited quantity of luxury tea has been made available, buyers are willing to pay more for the limited volume,” he told this newspaper.

Other industry officials and he felt luxury tea prices would Makaibari Tea Estate

~19,363

Badamtam Tea Estate (Goodricke Group)

~12,900

Namring Tea Estate (Poddar Group)

~11,000

Glenburn Tea Estate

~10,000

Castleton Tea Estate (Goodricke Group)

~7,000

Rohini Tea Estate

~5,500

remain upward this year. For example, the prime muscatel tea from Goodricke Group’s Castleton estate has risen above ~7,000 a kg from the earlier ~6,700 a kg. White tea from the Margaret Hope garden scaled up by 13 per cent.

“Luxury and prime tea from the Darjeeling gardens have a loyal and different set of buyers, who look for quality and are ready to pay exorbitant prices. This type of tea doesn’t react to market forces but depends on quality and the volume offered,” said Dutt.

The price of such teas are worked out in the same way as its usual counterpart. First, right after the harvest, a garden appointed tea taster provides an estimate, based on the taste. The garden then proposes to sell the lot at that price.

However, when the buyer sends his own taster, the estimate is generally revised downward and the final price calculated. The cost of production for such luxury tea is 10-12 times higher than the usual ones. “To produce 20 kg of luxury tea, one needs to pluck at least 200 kg of leaves,” S S Bagaria, chairman of the Bagaria Group, told this newspaper. Only the buds are used to process luxury tea; the leaf is generally discarded.

Rudra Chatterjee, director at Luxmi Group, which owns the Makaibari estate, added that this year so far, the quality of luxury tea had been superior.

Industry officials also said that over the past five years, the demand for such tea had tripled. However, they added, the spike in luxury prices doesn’t indicate better health for the overall Darjeeling tea industry. Nearly 80 per cent of the 8.13 million kg of Darjeeling production is exported and producers have been hit by the rising external value of the rupee. After a big crop loss at the start of the year (an estimated 700,00 kg loss), the industry is hoping that production in the second flush period (May-July) will be normal.