Ahmedabad: Wagh Bakri Tea Group, the third largest packaged tea company in India has taken a giant stride towards making its manufacturing plants ‘solar energy efficient.’ The company has installed a 125KW solar power rooftop facility at its Dholka factory, spreading over an area of 12,500 sq. ft, investing nearly Rs. 1 crore for the project.

Provisions have been made for an estimated 417 solar panels, each capable of generating 300W energy per day. The panels have been supplied by Topsun Energy Ltd. based in Mehsana. This solar power facility will generate 1.90 lakh units of energy per year, taking care of 20% of the annual energy requirements of the plant.

“Traditional energy sources have a limited life and causes pollution. This in turn leads to greenhouse effect. To look ahead to a greener future, Wagh Bakri Tea Group has decided to initiate a solar power project and we shall increase its capacity in the near future,” said Mr. Parag Desai, Executive Director, Wagh Bakri Tea Group.

The estimated reduced carbon dioxide emission is by 2225 tons during the project lifespan. The project utilises the Poly Crystalline solar cell technology, has sourced A-grade solar cells from Solartech, Taiwan and the inverters are of KACO, Germany make.

The Rs. 1,000 crore Wagh Bakri Tea Group is one of the first companies in the packaged tea industry to move towards sustainable energy sources and is steadily contributing towards a pollution- free world for the near future.

The Dholka manufacturing unit is spread over a land area of 56,000 sq. meters and has a built-up area of 35,000 sq. meters. It is the first of its kind ASRS set up in the tea industry. It has a unit blending capacity of 2,36,000 kg per day and a unit packing capacity of 1,50,000 kg per day. A total manpower of 650 to 700 per day is employed. With state-of-the-art infrastructure and equipment installed to take care of tea, hot and cold premix and tea bag production, 10 tea bag making machines produce 150 million tea bags per annum.

Stop pan-India e-auction of tea till system streamlined:Desai

Vice Chairman of “Federation of All India Tea Traders Association (FAITTA) and executive director of Gujarat based Wagh Bakri group, Paras Desai today said that the Pan India e-auction of tea introduced in June this year has proved to be a fiasco owing to various reasons and it should be stopped.

Talking to newsmen here Mr Desai, also the President of Western Indian Tea Dealers Association” (WITDA) said that the post auction operations have turned very problematic. ‘There were many issues with it. The lack of proper training to the buyers and system related errors were major causes of concern. In some cases after the issue of delivery order the cash is returned in the buyers account,’ he said.

‘Contrary to the belief that the e-auction will provide better price to producers the prices for them has gone down by Rs 8 to 10 a kg. The buyers base is also more or less the same as that of the older system. What the tea board should do is till the system is fully ready for its proper implementation the pan India e-auction should be put on hold and the old system of auction should be re-introduced,’ Mr Desai said.

To a query he said that the total tea production in India this year will remain equal to or above the 2015 figures of 125 crore kilograms. Of these around 22 crore kg was exported.

Public tea auctions have always played a key role as the main vehicle for primary marketing of tea in India for over a century ever since the first tea auction centre was set up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1861.

Public tea auctions handle more than 50 crore kg annually.

The newly designed e-Auction system is being used by all the six Auction Centres (Kolkata, Siliguri, Guwahati, Cochin, Coimbatore and Coonoor). The various users of the system like Manufacturers, Warehouses, Auctioneers and Buyers have been provided with access to various functionalities of the system. The e-Auction system integrates the process starting from creation of invoices till the delivery of tea from the warehouses, enabling better control and avoiding duplication of work thus reducing time. The auctioning of tea in India is being supervised by the Tea-Board of India.

However the pan India e-auction has drawn flak from various quarters even as Country’s tea producers’ apex body, Indian Tea Association (ITA) last month had said that post auction operations were hampered as the settlement bank and NSEIT, the facilitators of the pan India e-auction system, have failed to meet the payment settlement requirements of the traders.

The Tea Board introduced the pan India e-auction in June at all the tea auction centres. The board selected Bank of India as the settlement bank while NSEIT, the software developer of the e-auction platform, developed the post auction module and has been running the system.

DeshGujarat