Guwahati: Golden Needles tea from Donyi Polo made a stellar comeback on Thursday by fetching Rs 40,000 for a kilogram, making it the most expensive tea sold at any auction in the country till date.
On November 10 last year, the tea from the same garden had fetched Rs 18,801 at the GTAC. The country's tea auction record was last set on July 24 by Gold Special of Manohari garden, Dibrugarh district, at Rs 39,001 a kilogram.
On Thursday, 1.1kg of Golden Needles was bought by Assam Tea Traders, a city-based buyer which also has a retail counter. The tea was sold by Contemporary Brokers. The bidding started at 8.35am and was over in two minutes.
"Golden Needles is a unique handcrafted orthodox black tea processed from new buds. Utmost care is taken to retain the natural look of the buds. It is processed delicately on conducive weather parameters which distinguish it from other teas. The location - in the vicinity of glacier-fed Siang river - makes the tea different. It has a mild-bodied liquor, is sweet and has the aroma of fresh sugarcane pulp. I must thank Swashat Dutta of Contemporary Brokers for helping us to get a very good price and to Lalit Jalan of Assam Tea Traders for buying it at a record price," Manoj Kumar of Donyi Polo garden told The Telegraph .
Asked why he sold the tea at the auctions, he said the increase in the bidding limit from Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 encouraged him to do so. "If there can be a ceiling for bidding, there should also be a minimum selling price (below which tea cannot be sold) for the overall betterment of the industry," he added.
Donyi Polo is spread over 421 hectares of which 100 hectares are dedicated to organic tea.
Jalan of Assam Tea Traders said the tea was partly bought by Vineet Goenka of GB Tea Company, a Kanpur-based wholesaler, and Jayant Jalan of AbsoluteTea.in, an e-commerce website. Some of it will be kept at their retail counter in Guwahati. On their decision to bid for the tea, he said, "There is a rising demand for good tea and Indian consumers, especially the millenials, are ready to pay for it."
Traders said while the tea industry faces its challenges, it is finding hope in the good prices fetched by quality tea. They said the GTAC is also earning a name for sale of speciality tea, which attracts more business for the centre and global buyers.
Dinesh Bihani, secretary of Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers Association, said specialty teas were attracting more buyers and hoped that such teas would help the Assam tea industry regain its glory on the world map.
