STiR coffee and tea magazine

30 STiR coffee and tea | 2023 Issue 4 (August / September) India today has some 770 bought leaf factories, producing 52% of the nation's tea by volume. The BLF share is up from just 28% in 2011. I By Aravinda Anantharaman and Brian Mertens ndia has a vast pool of management, engineering, and software talent. But not enough is being tapped by the nation's small tea growers (STGs) and bought-leaf factories (BLFs), which handle about 52% of all tea production. Most smallholders are struggling to earn a decent living. To pay farmers more, BLFs need to improve margins. They must ensure consistent quality and appropriate value yet also control costs. They need to make tea to order, not churn out bulk prod- uct for sale at auction. That's what Abhijeet Hazarika believes, and he's three years into an experiment to prove it. A tea professional who retired from three decades of work at Tata Group in 2019, he long dreamed of injecting corporate-style innovation and management disci- pline into the small farms and SMEs that now play such a big role in India's tea sector. Why focus on small-scale producers? India's tea estates had long anchored the industry, but in recent decades they began to struggle with rising costs for wages and housing of the workers living on site — up to 60% of production costs. The BLF of- fers a streamlined model for doing business. BLFs purchase most or all their green leaf directly from small growers, processing it to sell via auction or private sale. 'Frugal Innovation': Elevating India's Bought Leaf Tea Factories Small tea factories need to lift margins and pay growers more. That's why one BLF in Assam is making shrewd use of tech and producing tea to order, not for auction. At Bor Noi Tea Factory in Assam State, step-by-step efforts to improve production processes are lifting efficiency and quality.

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