Kochi: The Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Company, the employees-owned firm, is set to promote the uniqueness of Munnar as an all-encompassing Kerala brand for retailing a variety of teas from its plantations. The company, a raw material supplier for other brands till recently, already retails a variety of teas, chocolates, incense sticks and fragrance oils under the umbrella brand ripple.
Chaibazar, an experience store for tasting the entire repertoire of teas, has been promoting the mountain fresh Munnar brand. "We are aiming at a turnover of Rs 35 crore from the five Chaibazar outlets in Munnar in 2019-20 from the levels of Rs 20 crore a year ago," says K. Mathew Abraham, managing director of KDHP, an associate company of Tata Global.
"We are planning one more Chaibazar outlet in Munnar and working on spreading the concept to other parts of the state," Abraham said. "Several persons impressed by the concept have approached us and we are open to the idea of franchise model for expansion of the network," he added. The company offers a variety of CTC, orthodox, green tea, organic tea, oolong teas (mildly oxidised teas) and specialty teas under the ripple brand.
Having a branded product is the only hope for a plantation company such as KDHP for survival as the inflation adjusted price of tea remains below the cost of production for the past many years. The average price realisation in tea auction is lower by Rs 2 per kg compared to two years ago.
KDHP produces 25 million kg of tea per year. The major chunk of the production is sold in bulk to other retailers. At present nearly 8.5 million kg of production is going for own branded products and the company plans to increase the share to 10 million kg by this year.
The company having nearly 10,000 employees in its rolls, registered a turnover of Rs 358 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 3.8 crore profit after tax compared to a profit after tax of Rs 0.48 crore in the previous year.
MSP for plantation crops: The government should extend the minimum support price (MSP) to plantation companies for the survival of the sector that provides livelihood to thousands of workers and conservation of the ecology, said Abraham.
The corporate plantations deserve the benefit of the MSP in view of the precarious price situation prevailing in the country, he said.
The unorganised sector is largely free from the statutory social cost such as PF, housing and other benefits while the corporate sector has no escape from such obligations, he said. "We have taken up the matter with the government through industry bodies such as United Planters Association of South India (UPASI) and Association of Planters of Kerala (APK)," he said. Kerala, probably, has the highest wage cost in the world for tea plantation workers with daily wage and other benefits totalling Rs 600 per day.
The government should bear a portion of the social cost and help the corporate plantations tide over the present crisis situation due to the depressed prices, he said.
