STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 31 Trustworthy advising ... Use our knowledge to your benefit. With our outstanding experience in tea buying and blend development, we offer you high-quality teas, sophisticated formulations and latest tea innovations. Independently. Personally. Since 1992. Get an impression of us: www.kktee.de These factories began to proliferate in the 1980s and have become especially prominent in the past ten years. As of 2023, India has some 770 BLFs, producing 52% of the nation's tea by volume. That compares to the 49% of tea made by 1,567 tea es- tates and some 900 estate factories, according to the Confedera- tion of Indian Small Tea Growers Associations. The change has been dramatic. In 2011, BLFs produced just 28% of tea, while estates accounted for 72%. As for STGs, the sector directly and indirectly supports the livelihoods some 1.5 million Indians. Most are struggling. Tea estates, too, are under pressure. But they enjoy the ad- vantage of many decades — even a century or more — of ac- cumulation of investment and know-how. They have veteran managers and technicians that can diagnose and solve produc- tion problems based on long experience and access to technol- ogy. This helps estates deal with food safety compliance and sustainability certification. BLFs can't easily match these advan- tages because they have smaller staffs and budgets. 'Intervention' To try his hand at deploying new tools and techniques in small- scale tea operations, Hazarika advises a small company that leased a BLF called Bor Noi Tea Factory, in Udalguri, Assam State. To trial farming methods and precisely understand growers' costs, the firm rented 1.15 acres (0.465 hectares) of land. Draw- ing on his corporate experience in tea procurement, process in- novation, and digital approaches in sourcing and blending, Haz- arika started testing various "interventions" in how STGs and BLFs work with tea. He focused on deploying off-the-shelf software and ma- chinery, new innovations from startups, and solutions impro- vised by his own technicians on the factory floor, progressing step by step. He calls this approach "frugal innovation": not too complicated, moderate in investment cost, with low costs for upkeep — yet high in safety, reliability, and impact. Instead of making bulk tea, he targets production of CTC (crush, tear, curl) tea specifically for customers in Gujarat State, the market he knows best. "I believe that every tea factory and tea estate has its own unique proposition which can reach a certain market in India," Hazarika said. "You must make to order. If you make to stock and you're doing the auctions, then you cannot really track tar- gets or do what's needed to improve value. The bulk market has hardly any segmentation in terms of customers." "Not everybody can make a so-called good tea, and there is no such thing as 'good tea.' A good tea is what the customer wants," Hazarika added. Details matter "When we took Bor Noi as an experiment, it was to change the paradigm by producing teas we aspire to produce but make it profitable," said Hazarika. His goal is to develop and showcase a small tea factory that can, despite small capital outlays and low operating costs, match any large estate in terms of compliance with food safety requirements and sustainability certifications. One key is attention to detail. "When the leaf comes into the factory, it's a matter of only seconds before you can destroy months of hard work because the processes are not tuned for it. The current and most important work is to ensure zero de- fects," said Hazarika. He examined every step of the process to see how to in- crease efficiency and quality, borrowing from methodologies Bor Noi's small farm is trialing new battery-powered harvesters that reduce emissions and noise while saving costs.

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