BURNED TEA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 60, 8 September 1941, Page 6

BURNED TEA

SURPLUS GOT RID OF

HIGH PRICES IN AUSTRALIA

(0.C.) SYDNEY, Sept. 4. Since the • war began the price of tea in Australia has risen lid a lb. It now retails' at from 3s 3d to 3s 7d a lb, according-to grade. :' ' Tea is Australia's favourite nonalcoholic beverage and every increase in price has, been met with protests from housewives' associations. 'Therefore, they were not mollified to learn this week from Mr. Gerald Harris, superintendent d. big British tea estates in' Ceylon, that Ceylon's surplus tea is being burned or dug into the ground as fertiliser. Mr. Harris," who is spending part of his leave in Australia, said that for a long time Ceylon has been producing too much tea.; The International Tea Regulation Committee in London regulates the output in India, Ceylon, and the Netherlands East:lndies, and if an estate produced more, than its quota, even in peacetime, the surplus tea was thrown away. . "Since the war I have been •compelled to destroy thousands of pounds of tea," Mr. Harris declared. "Destruction must be carried out immediately, as we must guard against coolie labourers taking any for private sale. Naturally, to you in Australia where there is a tea shortage, .the whole procedure sounds like sheer waste. But. much of the compulsory destruction of. tea is purely the result of restricted" shipping space, so I am told." Mr. Harris said that even in Colombo, where tea was bought from growers for dispatch to the United Kingdom, America, and Australia, the retail price of tea was relatively high; He pointed out that Ceylon plantations were supplying England with tea on a fixed contract basis, and that approximately 60 per cent, of their production was diverted to England under" arrangement. •'