KARACHI, Nov 29: Commercial production of tea will start from 2004 as tea cultivation in the NWFP picks up, following initial success of trial production undertaken by a multinational company.
A 159-acre of land has been earmarked in the NWFP for tea cultivation, while tea processing plant has already been set up.
Director Beverages, Lever Brothers, Naeem Khokar, told Dawn that his company produced two to three tons of tea this year.
Currently, tea production has been suspended as the planting season is restricted by weather conditions to a few short months. He said the process required extreme care and swift transfer of thousands of nursery plants to the fields and quick re-filling of the nursery for future plantation. Lever Brothers is currently producing nearly a million cuttings annually.
The total area under cultivation — 159 acres — is expected to rise to 360 acres by the end of this year and to 1,500 acres in the next five years, he said.
He said a mutually beneficial agreement was made with farmers, who sell their green leaves to the Lever Brothers at agreed prices.
He said Mansehra, Chitral and Swat were potential tea growing area and in order to grow high quality tea. It is essential to have constant downpours and the temperature ranging between 37 degrees centigrade during the day and 12 degrees centigrade at night.
The tea processing plant in the small town of Dhodial on 2.5 acres of land was inaugurated recently. The plant, he said, was expected to process 50 kg of tea per hour or a ton of made tea a day. The aggregate research and development, including those for the next five years, will cost Lever Brothers an estimated Rs260 million. The total cost of the plant is Rs11 million, whereas Rs12 million has been spent on the building and infrastructure.
A tea research report states that 1,500 kg of tea can be grown on one acre of land in Pakistan as compared to 3,500 kg in Kenya, 3,000 kg in Tanzania, 2,320 kg in India, 1,340 kg in Turkey, 1,110 kg in Sri Lanka and 960 kg in Bangladesh.
Naeem said Pakistan, a major tea importing country of over 110,000 tons per annum, was in the process of becoming a producer of tea.
