The leaf tea auctions of Coonoor Tea Trade Association held on Thursdays will be held this week along the Dust tea auctions on Friday as the market will remain closed for Pongal celebrations on Thursday.
For this Sale No: 2 to be held on Friday, a volume of 16.63 lakh kg has been catalogued. This is as much as 2.38 lakh kg less than the offer for Sale No: 1.
Of the 16.63 lakh kg offered for this week’s auctions, as much as 15.60 lakh kg belongs to CTC variety and only 1.03 lakh kg orthodox variety. The proportion of orthodox teas continues to be low in both leaf and dust grades. In the leaf tea counter, only 72,000 kg belongs to orthodox while 11.08 lakh kg, CTC. Among the dust tea, only 31,000 kg belongs to orthodox while 4.52 lakh kg, CTC. In all, 11.80 lakh kg belongs to Leaf grades and 4.83 lakh kg, dust grades.
Two bought leaf factories – Homedale and Crosshill – fetched record prices last week. Auctioned by Global Tea Brokers (GTB), Homedale topped at ₹381 a kg and Crosshill followed at ₹322. “Both were the highest price fetched these factories ever since manufacturing started in them,” GTB Managing Director Rajesh Gupta told BusinessLine.
“Besides, two grades of Crosshill teas, auctioned by GTB, topped the CTC dust tea auctions fetching ₹234 and ₹225 each,” he said.
Quotations with the brokers indicated ₹110-117 a kg for plain leaf grades and ₹167-226 for the best grades. For plain dust grades, they ranged ₹119-125 and for the best grades, ₹171-225.