TEA INDUSTRY AT NATAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 256, 28 October 1937, Page 11

TEA INDUSTRY AT NATAL

BRIGHT HOPES FOR THE FUTURE DURBAN (By Mail). Great hopes an. expressed for the future of the Natal tea industry. Mr. G. Lambe, an experienced English tea planter from Java, who has planted tea for 30 years in the Dutch East Indies, has been engaged to take control of a 1500-acre tea estate at Kearsney. He has been in Natal between two and three weeks and, after visiting the estate, has compiled a report holding out hopes of a bright future for the industry. “Natal tea at present is used principally for blending purposes,” he says, “but I have great hopes that it will be possible, in the future, to sell the tea on its merits as Natal tea. I have every confidence that it will stand up to competition with the medium-qual-ity imported brands. “The tea grown in this province is not of the best quality, and it will probably always be essential to import a certain percentage of good Ceylon or Indian tea for blending purposes. The climate and soil are suited to tea growing, though the rainfall of 46in. is rather on the low side. It is, therefore, very possible that it will be necessary to plant a hardy type of bush —as opposed to the fine Assam types of Northern India—which ipso facto means a poorer quality in the manufactured article. '

“At present about only 690,0001 b. of tea are produced in Natal, which I understand is about one-twentieth of the amount consumed. I see no reason why a very much greater proportion should not be grown successfully.