Assam's new tea e-marketplace starts auction, 24,000 kg tea sold

Assam's new tea e-marketplace at Jorhat town started functioning from Monday with the auction of 24,000-kgs of green, orthodox and CTC tea. This is the second tea e-auction centre in Assam after the one in Guwahati.

"The tea auctioned today was from 38 gardens. More than 45 buyers bid for nearly 24,000 kg of tea. The highlight of the first symbolic auction was green tea of Mahalaxmi Tea Estate sold at a premium of Rs 502 per kg. The tea was purchased by Guwahati based buyer M/s. Absolute Tea," said a statement issued by Mjunction, one of the largest B-to-B e-commerce company, which conducted the e-auction in partnership with Tea Board of India.

"I am blessed to be a part of this historic sale, being the first sale of the Jorhat Tea Auction Centre-cum-Emarketplace," said Bidyananda Barkakoty, owner of Mahalaxmi Tea Estate.

Mjunction, a joint venture of Tata Steel and SAIL had signed an MoU with the Tea Board, as part of which it will act as system integrator and design, develop and maintain the e-marketplace platform. The platform will significantly reduce the sales cycle time easing working capital burden, and will introduce innovations like quality vocabulary, will facilitate logistics and provide transparent and easy finance for stakeholders, it said.

Speaker of Assam Legislative Assembly, Hitendra Nath Goswami formally inaugurated the e-auction on Monday.

With nearly 800 big tea gardens, Assam contributes nearly 52 per cent of the country's total annual tea production. But high production and stagnant prices over the years has severely impacted the Assam tea industry. The lockdown imposed to prevent coronavirus infection further aggravated the situation with Assam government assessing Rs 600 crore loss to the industry so far this year.

"This auction platform is based on ex-garden/factory model, where sellers using their username and password, can submit Garden Invoices and upload the tea details to be put up for auction, on the mjunction platform, without sending their tea to the warehouse. The auction will be conducted every Monday. Depending on volume and process improvement, it may be scheduled twice a week later," mjunction further said.