Page 68 - #46 English

Tea

exporter of tea. Consequently, the Chittagong Tea Auction
was established in 1949 and today still over 90 percent of
the country’s teas are traded here. Talks about the setting
up of an economic corridor along the Bangladesh-China-
India- Myanmar (BCIM) border are on the way, focusing
on cooperation on transport, infrastructure, investment
and trade, which may well benefit the tea economy in the
near future.

Temples of Bagan in Myanmar. Most of the tea production
in Myanmar is reportedly organic.

To date, the tea economy is still fully controlled by
local companies. Several small producers have structured
themselves into the Myanmar Tea Cluster (MTC) and at
retail level, the main player is Nagarpayan Tea, with a
market share of around 30 percent.
Unilever opened a branch office in Yangon in 2013,
and Tata Global Beverages is also exploring to invest in
planting, processing and packing of tea. However, for
the time being local interests are holding on firmly to the
control of the tea market.
Although not yet easily available in the West, there
are a few terroir teas from Myanmar on the market, such
as Ko Kant, a delicious spring-picked green tea, named
after one of the Shan ethnic groups, which is available at
Bangladesh produces mainly black CTC tea. Mariage Frères in Paris, France, or Jungle Green, a fine
wulong made from old wild tea tree leaves, which is avail-
Myanmar: Vast Nation, Low Output able at Larsen & Thompson in Melbourne, Australia.
Myanmar is the second biggest tea producer of
the four, with an output of around 20,000 mt of tea in Laos: Little Land, Lot of Potential
2013. Independent from the British Crown since 1948, Laos is landlocked in the center of the Indo China
the former Burma changed its name to Myanmar in 1989 subcontinent, with a surface of 237,000km and a popula-
and incurred a long period of military rule and internal tion of only 6.5 million. Covered with mountains and high
strife. With a surface of 677,000km, Myanmar is by far plateaus, only 4 percent of the land is suitable for rice and
the vastest nation in Southeast Asia and shares borders other food crops. A Buddhist kingdom for many centuries,
with Bangladesh, India, China and Thailand. Laos came under French protection in 1899. Independence
Manuja Peiris, chief executive of the International in 1949 brought along a lot of ethnic, political and religious
Tea Committee, London, visited the capital Yangon in early strife and the current communist state was set up as the
2014 and reported that currently, the annual production Peoples Republic of Laos in 1975. The country gradually
amounts to about 8,000mt of green tea, about 4,000mt of
black CTC tea and a large amount of 16,000mt of pickled
tea, a spicy tea leaf preparation which is consumed as a
delicacy food. Fresh green tea leaf is also being processed
into “sour tea,” a dried pickled tea that is becoming popular
in the country.
Myanmar has both tea species: the big leaf Assamica,
which is endemic and the small leaf Sinensis, brought
in from China. Most of the production is reported to be
organic, but there are no fully reliable data collected.
Acreage is estimated to amount to approximately 80,000ha
with an annual output of green leaves of 90,000mt, which
means that yields are remarkably low. In fact, there are
commercially grown gardens and also many wild tea tree
forests, which are harvested by the local minorities.
The tea-growing area is concentrated in the north, in
Shan state, around the former tea capital Namshan. The
tea growers are mainly small holders and many are also
poppy growers. Lands are now reportedly being used to Covered with mountains and high plateaus, only 4 percent of
start coffee cultivation as an additional revenue crop. the land in Laos is suitable for tea and other crops like rice.

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