The News – International – Pakistan
By Shahzad Anwar
KARACHI: The tea blenders are yet to pass on the benefit of low prices in the international market to local consumers.
Though two major tea blenders, Unilever and Tapal, had announced to cut prices of some of their tea brands, it was too small as compared to price fall witnessed in global tea market, particularly in Kenya, during the last three months.
Unilever is the major tea blender and holds almost 45 to 46 million kg share of branded tea market followed by Tapal with 28 million kg out of a total 170 million kg annual consumption of black tea in the country.
“A couple of weeks back Unilever had announced Rs8 cut on its 200 gram black tea packet, but the company maintained previous price tag on its 400 gram and 1000 gram tea packets,” General-Secretary of Karachi Retail Grocers Group Fareed Qureshi said.
He maintained that 200 grams pack of Lipton Yellow Label black tea available at Rs60 was being sold at Rs68 in the beginning of this month. The 400 grams and 1000 gram pack of Yellow Label were still being sold at previous rates of Rs135 and Rs270 respectively. Similarly the other major tea blender, Tapal, reduced price of its 1000 gm pack of black tea to Rs260 from Rs280 but kept prices of other packs unchanged.
The humble discounts offerd by tea packers in Pakistan are in stark contrast with the downward trend in the Kenyan tea that has dropped to $1.85-$2.00 per kilogram. Three months earlier, Kenya black tea was priced at more than $3 per kg in global market.
Pakistan is the second largest tea importer after Russia as annual consumption of the country is estimated around 170 million kilograms met though import from 21 countries including Kenya, Bangladesh, Brundi, China, India, Malawi, Nepal, Rwanda, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Vietnam. Kenya is one of the world’s top three producers of black tea together with India and Sri Lanka. Kenya tea enjoys around 85 percent market share in Pakistan.
However in last couple of years import from India is also inching up as Indian tea exporters have acquired around 11 percent of total market share. Despite recording a significant rise in import from India no adverse effect was witnessed on Kenyan tea share in Pakistani market. However tea imports from other countries including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka fell with rise in import from India.
Two days back a delegation of top Indian tea producers and exporters culminated their visit of Pakistan with hope of good futuristic scope for their produce, however no major deal was reported so far at end of their visit.
Chairman Pakistan Tea Association (PTA) Hamid Khawaja told that it was a regular visit of India tea delegation in which they met with their respective buyers to strengthen tea trade between two countries, but he did not see extra ordinary jump in tea trade between two countries.
