Business Tea Market
Bartleets Weekly Tea Surveillance upto November 28:
Leafy grades witness overall improvement
Once again the quantity of tea arriving at the Colombo Auction dipped
significantly to 5.222 mkg as compared with 5.903 mkg in the previous
sale. This week’s Ex-estate crops amounted to 0.646mkg as against
0.752mkg last week.
In the Tippy market, Iran was most active whilst the CIS and Dubai
were buying at moderate levels. Exporters representing Saudi Arabia were
again selective in their buying.
Leafy-grades witnessed an overall improvement in all grades across
the board except for BOP1. Two all-time records were broken as the OPA
and OP1s reached new highs.
As the quantity availability for the next three sales in December is
only 15mkgs, the approximate quantities per sale will be around 4mkg,
equivalent to four one-day sales.
All these figures indicate that future availability will be squeezed,
leading to a rising market.
Further trade discussions were held this week between the Sri Lankan
High Commissioner in Pakistan and the President of Pakistans’ Chamber of
Commerce and Industry.
Sri Lankan aspirations to regain top-spot in the tea market by
boosting exports and the prospects for Pakistan to scale-up on exports
of textiles, fabric, fruits, leather and sports equipment were at the
fore of the discussions.
Whilst both sides expressed solidarity and spoke of an unbreakable
bond ever since the days of independence, relations were somewhat
tarnished by the alleged headlines in the Pakistani media claimed that
‘our friend (Sri Lanka) has betrayed us’.
The stories were referring to Sri Lanka’s failure this week to veto a
motion calling for the suspension of Pakistan from the Commonwealth.
Attempts to consolidate the world demand for tea in order to raise
future production by means of setting up a forum are currently in the
pipeline according to news (LBO) emerging from the ongoing Tea
convention in Guwahati, India.
Despite tea being the world’s favourite drink, global tea production
currently exceeds consumption. The forum, once established, would be
able to exert influence on the Inter-Governmental Group (IGG) on tea
under the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
All the big players in the global market including India, Kenya,
China, Bangladesh and Indonesia would be part of the producer group that
will work towards analysing world demand in order to assess required
production levels. However, the group is expected to stop short of
functioning as a cartel.
Following the recent ISO 2200 accreditation for HELADIV, the Sri
Lankan based company has won further accolade, winning the Sooriya Sinha
Award from Mawbima Lanka Padanama for being a genuine local product.
The markets remained resilient on Wednesday despite a bomb blast in
Colombo in the early hour’s before trading on a day that was dominated
by the plantations.
The sector commanded Rs. 56 million or 32 per cent of total turnover.
With reference to the weekly surveillance of the 19 plantation stock, 11
were up in value, seven were down and one remained static. Elpitiya,
Hapugastenna and Bogawantalawa were amongst the stocks registering price
improvements, week-on-week.
USD 22-Nov-07 23-Nov-07 26-Nov-07 27-Nov-07 28-Nov-07
Buying 110.4400 110.4000 110.4000 110.4500 110.4500
Selling 110.5000 110.4500 110.4500 110.5000 110.5000 |
