Word: teas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Despite the idyllic surroundings, Happy Valley nearly closed four years ago. It faces the same challenges confronting the rest of the Indian tea industry--intense global competition, fickle consumer tastes and labor disputes that have occasionally turned violent. India produces more tea than any other country in the world except China, but after years of neglecting to invest in marketing or technology, India has seen its exports fall behind those of Sri Lanka, Kenya and China in the $7.5 billion global tea market...
Since 1998, when a glut of tea from low-cost producers caused prices and profits to plunge, Indian growers have struggled to pay the country's 1 million tea workers. Unpaid employees launched a wave of strikes, while some owners sold or simply abandoned their plantations. "Many tea plantations became totally unviable," says Shiv K. Saria of Soongachi Tea Industries, which owns five tea farms in northeastern India. Estates went bankrupt because they were selling at below-cost prices and banks wouldn't lend any more...
This year India's tea industry has finally begun fighting back. The central government has promised $1.16 billion over the next 15 years in loans and subsidies for new, more productive plantings. Copying the clever marketing of tea producers in Sri Lanka and Africa, Indian entrepreneurs have begun to build their own upscale brands. Some producers, meanwhile, are branching out into tea bars for the subcontinent's free-spending young professionals. India's tea producers may never recapture the glory days, but they'll need a new strategy to survive into the future...
When the Ambootia Tea Group bought the 437-acre (177 hectare) Happy Valley tea estate in March, its tea bushes were old, its machinery was obsolete, and its workers had not been paid regular wages for months. Seven months on, the estate's new owners have hired new managers, started regular maintenance of the plants and soil and begun a move to organic farming. Perhaps most important, productivity is inching up. In addition to a guaranteed minimum daily wage of $1.38, workers get incentives to pick more. Darjeeling's oldest tea estate is turning its original factory into a working...
Appealing to high-end consumers abroad and to the increasingly discerning tastes of the booming Indian middle class is a top priority for India's teahouses. The Tea Board of India won "geographical indication" status from the World Trade Organization for Darjeeling tea last year and is pursuing similar recognition for Assam tea, prized for full-bodied blends like English breakfast, and for the aromatic, copper-colored Nilgiri tea from southern India. Tea producers are experimenting with delicate white teas, which are less processed and contain more antioxidants than black teas, and oolongs, which fall midway between green and black...