Tea auctions this week

A total of 6.0 m/kgs came under the hammer this week.

Ex Estate offerings totalled a 1.0 m/kgs. It was heartening to witness the turn around in the market particularly for the better teas, which appreciated Rs.5-10 per kg all round, creating a significant price parity between the better teas and their poorer counterparts. The price movement at this week’s Mombasa Tea Auction also followed a similar trend endorsing the greater demand for better quality teas. Therefore, the current price parity would no doubt be encouraging to producers to focus on product quality at the first available opportunity to secure better performance on estates. The tea bag sector continued to be dominant on a cross section of the BOPFs on offer whilst shippers to UK, Japan and the Continent continued to selectively absorb the better liquoring teas.

Low growns continued to witness a similar trend which is rather discouraging for producers of good quality teas. The feature at the Low grown sale of yesterday was the wide spread demand that was evident for teas at the lower end of the market. This week too the better teas were mostly lower with buyers being very selective. This was quite evident in the OP/OPA grades as the parity between the better teas and the bottom end teas have narrowed considerably. There was fair demand from Iran, Dubai, CIS and selective inquiry from Saudi Arabia. (Forbes Tea Brokers)

MONTHLY AVERAGES – OCTOBER 2006

The total sale average for October of Rs.210.68 per kg shows an increase of Rs.12.82 or 6.47% growth compared to Rs.197.86 per kg of October 2005. It is also relevant that all categories of tea have recorded increases for the month with the High growns ecording an increase of 11.4% followed by Medium growns of 11.2% and the Low growns of 4.3% compared to the corresponding month.

In analysing averages for the period January-October the total cumulative figure for the year 2006 too shows a growth of 6.9% compared to the corresponding period. It is also significant that all categories have shown a growth compared to the same period of last year. -Daily Mirror FT