A tea garden in Darjeeling

A Howrah-based company is considered a pioneer in manufacturing tea processing machines and is the number one exporter, reports Amrita Ghosh

Tea-drinkers, particularly connoisseurs, can be very fussy about their morning cuppa. They would go to any lengths to get the best tea leaves and brew them to perfection to get the right flavour and aroma that fills their senses as they sip their morning tea. A well-brewed cup of tea is like a well-conducted orchestra with every note played at the right time. So while it is absolutely necessary to have good quality tea leaves, it is also imperative that the leaves be processed in the right way. And it is here that Howrah plays a major role.

The machinery needed to process tea leaves is made in the heart of Howrah. While Calcutta’s twin city might have lost its glory in the field of manufacturing machine goods, it is still the biggest manufacturer of tea processing machines both in the country and abroad. For the last two-and-half decades, Vikram India Ltd, a Howrah-based tea processing machine manufacturing company, has been acknowledged by the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) as the number one exporter of tea processing machines in the country.

In 1974, Harikrishna Chaudhary, originally from Haryana, set up a forging unit of the tea processing machines at 122, J.N. Mukherjee Road on three-and-half bigha of land. Chaudhury, who worked in a tea garden in Assam, decided to set up a spare parts manufacturing unit of tea processing machines in Howrah. He knew that there were skilled labourers in Howrah and there were hundreds of small machine parts manufacturing units here too.

“The owners of the small machinery parts units in Howrah are moody. They take their own time to make machine parts. But ultimately they make them to perfection. That was why our chief decided to set up this tea processing factory here,” said Shyam Agarwal, the executive director of the company.

More than 150 small engineering units located in Howrah town supply spare parts to the company. The company, that was set up for manufacturing spare parts of the tea processing machines, like seamless forged stainless steel segments, is now manufacturing the entire range of tea processing machines.

Vikram India Ltd is known as the pioneer in manufacturing tea processing machines, particularly because the company first started forging segments made of steel. Earlier, the segments were made of cast iron, in which two parts of the ring were made separately and then joined together. But the segments made of stainless steel proved to be more perfect for processing CTC tea and became popular in the tea processing industry within a few years of its launch.

“The stainless steel segments became so popular in the industry that the owners of tea processing units kept asking us why we were not manufacturing the entire range of machines. Being confident of our skills, we started manufacturing. Now we are number one in the industry,” said a senior officer of the company.

Apart from supplying machines to Assam, Tripura, North Bengal, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and parts of Karnataka, the processing machines manufactured in Howrah factories are exported to Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Japan and other nations of south-east Asia and Africa.

The company has three units now – the forging unit is at J. N. Mukherjee Road and two assembling units at Bankra and Katlia respectively.

“We not only supply machines to the tea processing units throughout the country and abroad but also help them set up the entire units,” said Agarwal. He said that with the growth in the tea industry all over the world, the demand for tea processing machines has gone up.

The company is now focussing on research and development. “We have our own R&D units that are constantly working on the design and technical aspect of the machines.

Besides, we regularly interact with the engineers of Tea Research Institution (TRI) and researchers of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) for upgradation of the processing machines,” said Agarwal. He also said that the company takes the feedback provided by the tea processing industry very seriously while upgrading the machines. “We give importance to the feedback of the tea industry as it knows the kind of upgradation required in the machines because the taste of the tea depends on the right type of processing machines,” he said.

However with the rapid expansion of the business, the company is now finding it difficult to continue manufacturing and assembling in the narrow lanes of J. N. Mukherjee Road or Bankra. The trucks or trailers carrying huge tea processing machines often face serious trouble in entering and leaving the factory premises through the narrow road made narrower still by parked vehicles.

The company has already started setting up a big factory on 16 bighas of land beside NH6 near Dhulagarh toll plaza in which all the three units will be shifted. “Construction of an 80,000 sq ft shed is going on in the new factory site. Another 80,000 sq ft shed will be built within a year. The forging and assembling units will be shifted to the new site by November this year,” said Agarwal.