Better selling & quality urged to save Darjeeling tea

Tea Board of India has started work on a new package for the Darjeeling tea producers. The package would take up quality issues.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of Darjeeling Planters' Association (DPA), A Sengupta, additional secretary in the ministry of commerce and industries, also pointed out that Darjeeling tea was not being marketed well.

He said planters had to realise that it was not enough to focus on domestic consumption.

To take up the overseas marketing case, Tea Board was planning to launch a generic promotion for Darjeeling tea and speciality tea for the UK and US markets. Das said, US was emerging as one of the fastest growing markets.

K S David, chairman DPA also raised the issue of marketing. He said, whilst the dwindling Darjeeling crop was a matter of concern , the industry had done little to market Darjeeling as a brand.

"Members who are unwilling to contribute a part of their earnings to promote the MARK have thwarted efforts made in this direction by my predecessors. The situation has become so depressing that even normal subscriptions are not being paid and it has been my unpleasant job to delist some defaulting producers" he said.

However, DPA plans to conduct roadshows to promote and educate consumers on Darjeeling tea. The organisation had already collected a small corpus and urged the Tea Board to assist with a matching sum. A delegation would be visiting the US, Japan and Germany in May 2004 to hold the roadshows.

In a parallel development, Tea Board has approached UNESCO for development of Darjeeling region, said N K Das, chairman of Tea Board.

UNESCO was already working on development of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway and now Tea Board has urged the organisation to take up development of the region as a whole.