STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 31 ECO-FRIENDLY TEA PRODUCTS Packed with materials made from naturally renewable resources As an international family-owned company with more than 140 years of experience in the tea business, Hälssen & Lyon has a long tradition of responsibility – to our employees, partners, society and nature. For several years now, we have developed tea products for our business customers where not only the tea comes from sustainable cultivation, but the packaging is produced with naturally renewable raw materials. Our production processes have been successfully adapted so that we can effectively process these eco-friendly materials using our machinery. We want to set standards – in terms of environmental awareness and social commitment. Join us on this journey! www.haelssen-lyon.com "This is the first time that the crop is down, and prices are also down, espe- cially in the Darjeeling and the Dooars regions," said Atul Asthana, managing director, and chief executive officer, Goodricke Group. Asthana spoke on June 14 at the BIMSTEC Tea Forum and Expo, co-hosted by India's Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Asthana chairs the ICC National Expert Committee on Tea. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi- Sector Technical and Economic Coopera- tion Initiative for Trade, Investment, and Climate Change (BIMSTEC), founded in 1997, represents a region of 1.73 billion people with a combined economy of $4.4 trillion. More than 400 trade and industry representatives from seven BIMSTEC member countries attended the three-day event convened in Kolkata. Hidden stocks Food inflation has depressed household spending globally. Europe is in recession. Soft demand has induced tea packers to trim inventories that expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lack of data exacer- bates the sector's planning around sup- ply/demand factors. Tea surpluses and shortfalls are opaque globally, unlike the coffee industry, which precisely tracks available stocks. A reasonable estimate based on Inter- national Tea Committee (ITC) statistics is that the production of black tea currently exceeds supply by around 200,000 metric tons, with 65,000 metric tons of CTC (cut, tear, curl) warehoused in Kenya, idled by economic crises in Egypt and Pakistan that are suppressing imports. ITC chair Ian Gibbs said, "If you look at prices over the last 20 years, there is no movement. In real terms, tea prices are less than what was paid 100 years ago," said Gibbs. "It's terrifying. The industry is at the limit and has been for far too long," Gibbs told attendees at last year's North American Tea Conference. The tea market has historically shown persistent oversupply, which has kept downward pressure on prices, according to a cost-benefit analysis of Kenya tea growers published this year by IDH The Sustainable Tea Initiative. "Low mar- gins and underinvestment have tended to jeopardize productivity and quality and have acted as a barrier to improving growers' working conditions and liveli-

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