TEA PRODUCERS

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1933, Page 11

TEA PRODUCERS

TO RESTRICT OUTPUT. FIVE-YEAR AGREEMENT. The tea producers in -Java, India and Ceylon—countries where practically- all the world’s supply of tea is produced—have agreed to restrict their exports by 15 per cent, as from April 1. The object is to check over-production in the industry. Competition in the tea industry in these • countries has for some years been extremely keen, with the result that attempts have been made by the various English and Dutch producers to arrive at some satisfactory arrangement to restrict the production of, tea and put the industry on a profitable 1 basis. The manager of an Auckland firm of tea merchants said that although the agreement was not to become operative until April 1, there was already a sign that the producers were in earnest, since within the last three weeks this prices of the cheapest teas in the countries of production had risen 25 per cent. “We have not,- of course, felt this rise in New Zealand,” he said, “but it is bound to come after April, when tea consumers will have to pay prices for their tea that obtained in normal times." The restriction scheme, he said, contained seven main points, the most important being that the restriction was to be based on one of the years 1929, 1930, 1931, the participating countries having the choice. It was practically certain that Ceylon and British India producers would choose 1929 as their basis, and the Dutch East Indies 1931. The scheme was to hold good for five years, and .to be reviewed at the close of each year. A Ceylon tea planter, Mr. R. Jordan, who is spending a furlough in New Zealand, said to-day that both the tea and the rubber industries in Ceylon were, in a poor way, resulting from the depression and over-production. Ceylon had its largest market in England, where, unfortunately, the vast majority of the people were drinking the cheapest .teas, vzhich directly affected the Ceylon producers, whose teas were mainly of high quality. The Ceylon teas, with the possible exception of the tea produced, a Darjeeling,'were the'finest in the world. He had hopes that the new agreement between the English and the Dutch producers would stabilise the industry.