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Bangurs looking for tea estates in North, South India

KOLKATA: The P. D. Bangur group, which has tea, coffee and rubber plantations in North and South India, is scouting for acquisitions in the tea space, as part of its plans to double its tea production by 2010. Tea estates in both the regions are on the scanner of the group, which also grows spices such as black pepper, areca and cardamom.

The tea company in the group, Joonktollee Tea & Industries Ltd (JTIL), had already acquired a tea garden in Assam, taking its total number of gardens in Upper Assam to two. In addition, it has an estate in Goomankam in Karnataka. The total output from these gardens is 4.7 lakh kg. Besides, it will get production of about 50,000 kg from Jamirah Tea Company which it acquired in Assam recently. JTIL also gets green tea supplies from the Nilmoni tea estate which is owned by JTIL subsidiary. This single estate company, Shyam Sundar Tea Company, was bought a few years ago as the group started chalking out its tea plans.

“The Bangurs are not a tea family but it now wants to get into it in a bigger way with well-managed gardens which produce quality tea”, a company source said. It may be mentioned here that JTIL was originally promoted by John Elliot in 1874. In 1920, the Scottish family handed over the control to a managing agency. Subsequently, in 1954, the Bangurs acquired the managing agency, as a result of which JTIL came into their fold.

Elaborating on the production augmentation plans sources said that the total output which will touch 5.2 million kg in 2008 is proposed to be scaled up to 10 million kg by 2010, adding that the uprooting and replanting programme under implementation for some time now, along with an acquisition is likely to give a fillip to production. “The strategy is to continuously upgrade existing gardens while looking for acquisitions which can add value to the production volume and the product-profile”, sources said. Sources said that productivity of JTIL’s gardens would get a boost from the uprooting and replanting activities. JTIL has a total of 12,000 acres under tea cultivation employing 1,400 people.

The tea grown by it is CTC tea, but which is of a good quality. The tea is sold in the domestic market only.

The teas grown on its estates have been winning the Golden Leaf award given by United Planters’ Association of Southern India (UPASI).

Aside from tea, the group owns coffee and rubber estates in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The group controls the Cochin Malabar .

However, although in the past it has reopened closed gardens such as Pullikana which employed 500 workers for its inorganic growth plan, it is not keen on looking at the 33 closed gardens in Kerala and West Bengal as it feels that it is an uphill task to revive those gardens in a viable manner.

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