For 36 years, Asim Saikia has run a small-scale tea garden on five acres of land in Assam’s Golaghat district. It has been getting more difficult over the past two decades, he says, but this year he is questioning whether remaining in the tea industry is viable at all. The reason — a plummet in the prices small tea growers like him are being offered by the factories they sell them to.
“This is the season when tea plucking and sales are in full swing. But while last year I was able to sell the green leaves to factories at `25-26 per kg, this year the factory prices I’m getting are `14-15 per kg. Since quality plucking itself costs over `10 per kg and there are carrying costs as well, I’m barely getting enough to keep the estate going,” he said.
He isn’t alone in this predicament. While the market for Assam tea has long been grappling with several issues — such as production outweighing demand — this year, producers cite an additional concern: an uptick in imports of cheaper tea from other producing countries in Africa and Asia.
This has been flagged by several tea associations, pushing for greater regulation and tracking of tea imports. The associations have particularly flagged a jump in tea exported by Kenya to India — according to the Tea Board of Kenya, the African country’s exports have jumped to 17.13 million kg in 2024, a whopping 225% rise from the 5.26 million kg in 2023. Between January and June 2025, Kenya has exported 6.69 million kg to India against 4.61 million kg during the same period last year.
“The concern is that these cheaper teas being imported are being blended with a percentage of Assam tea by packers and brands, and then the product is marketed, sold and re-exported as Assam tea,” said Tea Association of India (Assam branch) secretary Dipanjol Deka.
For small tea growers like Saikia, who are already reeling under a general downturn in the market for tea, this comes as a significant blow. Such tea growers – those with estates less than 10 hectares in size and without their own tea factories — form the smallest grassroots unit of Assam’s famed tea industry and currently account for around 55 percent of Assam’s tea output.
Assam accounts for roughly half the tea produced in India annually. In 2024, Assam constituted 649.84 million kg or 50.58 percent of India’s total tea production. This figure was 688.33 million kg (49.3 percent) in 2023, 688.7 million kg (50.4 percent) in 2022 and 667.73 million kg (49.7 percent) in 2021.
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According to an Assam government report, the tea industry contributes nearly 5 percent of Assam’s Gross State Domestic Product.
Meanwhile, exports constitute a small fraction of India’s total production. In 2024, India had exported 254.67 million kg of tea — the third highest in the world. This was up from around 231 million kg in 2023 and 2022.
In Golaghat, a major tea-growing district of Assam, the ongoing distress is on everyone’s lips. Here, even a major tea growing and manufacturing estate like Halmira, run by the Kolkata-based Newar Group, is experiencing an average drop of Rs 32 per kg in the price for its made tea — tea leaves processed for brewing — at auctioning centres.
Halmira general manager Girdhari Sharma says that imports are affecting small-growers and bought-leaf factories the most.
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“Packers blend premium tea bought from estates with cheaper tea from bought leaf factories. The imported teas are essentially replacing this small grower tea and is hampering that chain considerably,” he said.
While growers bemoan the prices that bought leaf factories – factories not associated with any tea estates — offer, the latter attribute this to the struggle to find buyers at viable prices.
At Malpani Tea Company, one of the oldest bought leaf factories in Golaghat, proprietor Amit Malpani declares that the sector is experiencing its most difficult year yet, with most such factories having roughly 30 percent of its product this year lying unsold at the factory-level. At the Malpani factory, sacks of made tea lie piles – the proprietor estimates there are 1.2 lakh kg of made tea lying there.
“We are selling at 20-30 rupees less than our cost of production. Every factory is making a loss. Since I’ve been in the industry for a long time, I have numerous buyers across India. Normally they themselves call, but this year I’m making calls every day trying to get buyers at a decent price. And the longer we don’t sell it, the lower its price is going to get because tea has a shelf life,” he said.
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This difficulty in selling is also reflected in the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre, where its secretary Priyanuz Dutta says that the 9 million kg of made tea has been brought for sale to the centre as against 5 million kg last year.
“The number of buyers is the same but producers not getting private buyers are trying to sell through auctions. The quantity sold through the centre is higher because of this, but the unsold quantity is also much higher,” he said.
Mrinal Saikia, the MLA from Khumtai, one of the legislative assembly constituencies in Golaghat district, has voiced his concern about the consequences of the ongoing distress, which he links to tea imports.
“All across Assam, some 25 lakh families are dependent on the tea industry. In my constituency, every third person is dependent on the tea industry, be it as workers or as small growers. There needs to be some kind of intervention because if this continues, it will break down the local economy here,” he said.
