Calcutta, July 28: Goodricke Group is eyeing a 25 per cent growth in its packet tea production in the next two years to 10 million kg.

"This year our production for packet tea was 8 million kg and we have plans to spend Rs 10 crore for its marketing. However, this will go up later," said Arun Narain Singh, managing director and CEO of Goodricke Group, on the sidelines of the company's 40th annual general meeting in Calcutta today.

"The branded tea business showed excellent results with volume growth of 11 per cent and value growth of 12 per cent in 2015 over the previous year," said P.J. Field, chairman of Goodricke Group.

Another focus area for the company is the international instant tea market. "This category has been doing reasonably well lately and we have recently ventured into countries such as China, South Korea and Japan. In fact, we have plans to expand in Southeast Asia," said Singh.

The company manufactures about 600,000 kg of instant tea annually at its factory in the Dooars and plans to ramp up capacity by 10-15 per cent.

"Although we offer instant tea in several countries such as US, the UK and Germany, the growth prospects are better in the Southeast Asian region," Singh said.

In 2015, Goodricke's total manufactured crop dipped 1.13 per cent to 21.84 million kg from 22.09 million kg in the previous year because of severe drought in the early part of the year. Of this, about 5 million is sourced from small growers.

The company is also looking to invest in more plantations but only in Assam. "We are looking to acquire one or two more gardens in Assam as the land there is still viable and there is a lot of opportunity in the export market for both CTC and orthodox leaf," said Singh.

At present, the tea producer owns 12 gardens in Dooars, 3 estates in Darjeeling and 2 gardens in Assam.

"We are also looking at dairy farming as an alternative business and are awaiting the state's nod to increase the permissible area limit from 3 per cent to at least 10 per cent," said Singh.