Tea Trade Association of Cochin to set up trade centre at Rs 100 crore

Kochi: The Tea Trade Association of Cochin has decided to set up a state-of-the-art Tea Trade centre at an estimated cost of Rs 100 crore. This will be funded partly through the Union Commerce Ministry and partly through equity contribution from various stakeholders. The proposal is supported by The Tea Board of India.

It will be set up at 10 acres provided by the Cochin Port Trust. The association's managing committee has approved the feasibility study for establishing the centre and has decided to identify the potential investors among its members.

The Tea centre will aim at consolidation of various activities connected with tea trade under one roof with key focus on centralizing the warehousing operations, which is presently done by 40 independent warehouse operators.

In addition, the tea centre plans to introduce the concept of common processing facilities, which will be used by various stakeholders as an initiative to promote production of value added tea in the domestic market dominated by trading in dust variety of tea for domestic consumption.

According to V Unnikrishnan, outgoing chairman of the association, the centre could lead to enhancement of tea exports from the centre taking advantage of the facilities of Kochi port.

The Cochin Port Trust chairman Paul Antony said Willingdon Island in Kochi port is the main tea auction centre in South India with large number of brokers, buyers, and sellers transacting about 70 million kg of tea every year.