| Hear the Headlines ― Economic Forecasters Predict Higher Tea Prices in 2022 | The Rush of Holiday Orders is Easing - Now a Delivery Crisis has Emerged | German Tea Drinkers Set a Consumption Record Last Year Despite Lockdowns | PLUS Frugal Innovation, Part 1| Guests ― Abhijeet Hazarika, @TeaSigma, Saurav Berlia, LR Group (Berlia Fresh Foods & Beverages) and Shekib Ahmad, managing director Koliabur Tea Estate.| Features ― This week Tea Biz travels to Assam...
| Hear the Headlines ― Economic Forecasters Predict Higher Tea Prices in 2022 | The Rush of Holiday Orders is Easing - Now a Delivery Crisis has Emerged | German Tea Drinkers Set a Consumption Record Last Year Despite Lockdowns | PLUS Frugal Innovation, Part 1| Guests ― Abhijeet Hazarika, @TeaSigma, Saurav Berlia, LR Group (Berlia Fresh Foods & Beverages) and Shekib Ahmad, managing director Koliabur Tea Estate.| Features ― This week Tea Biz travels to Assam, India to explore "Frugal Innovations" that utilize simple technology to address some of the most vexing challenges facing the tea industry. In Part 1 of the series, Aravinda Anantharaman talks with Abhijeet Hazarika @TeaSigma, an IT analyst and former head of process innovation at Tata Global Beverages, and visits with growers Saurav Berlia and Shekib Ahmad on cost-efficient experiments and pilots that demonstrate why tea producers should embrace simple technologies with scalable impact.Frugal Innovation: Introducing Technology into the Value Chain ― There are few entry barriers to tea. It does not demand heavy infrastructure. But the complaint from smallholders selling raw leaf to large-scale tea producers operating multiple factories is that farmgate prices are not commensurate with costs. Quiet work underway in India is yielding encouraging results that lower the cost of tea production, improve quality, and ease a shortage of labor. At the same time, the economics of the tea trade is shifting from oversupply to scarcity. Demand is expected to exceed production in 2021 and a deficit of tea is expected through 2023, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Globally tea prices increased $0.21 cents per kilo since the beginning of 2021, up 7.3%, according to Trading Economics. Abhijeet Hazarika, IT analyst @TeaSigma and former head of process innovation at Tata Global Beverages, observed that “Tea is not a very high profit yielding commodity and will not be so in the foreseeable future until some tech breakthrough happens.” The frugal innovations described in this series, combined with higher prices may herald that breakthrough.
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