Tea Trade Centre coming up at Willingdon Island

The Tea Trade Association of Kochi has decided to set up a state-of-the-art Tea Trade Centre at Willingdon Island. The proposal has been supported by the Tea Board of India.

The Association’s managing committee approved the feasibility study carried out by G Joseph & Associates, a firm of chartered accountants and consultants.

The proposed centre will be set up in 10 acres of land provided by the Cochin Port Trust. The AGM of the association has decided to proceed further and identify the potential investors among its members.

“Willingdon Island in Cochin Port is a main Tea Auction Centre in South India. The large number of brokers, buyers and sellers operating here transact about 70 million kilograms of tea every year. However, the operations are scattered and labour intensive with blending being done manually.

The Port Trust will provide the land and look forward to a trade promotional entity like the Tea Trade Association to create the facilities and manage the operations at International benchmarks,” said Cochin Port Trust chairman Paul Antony.

The Tea Centre aims at the consolidation of activities connected with tea trade with focus on centralising the warehousing operations. In addition, the centre proposes to introduce the concept of common processing facilities. “There will be an enhancement in tea exports from the centre taking advantage of the facilities of Cochin Port,” said V Unnikrishnan, the outgoing chairman of the Tea Trade Association.