GUWAHATI, Sept 24 - At 11 am of September 25, 1970, the then chairman of the Assam Tea Brokers RG Baruah had hammered down the first lot of tea - 1317 kg of Broken Orange Pekoe of Haroocharai tea estate - which was bought by tea trader Zafar Ali for a whopping Rs 42.50 per kg at the newly constructed auction hall at the erstwhile Stadium Guest House here. As RG sounded the hammer, it heralded a new era in Assam�s tea industry with the launch of the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre.
The auction centre, which turns fifty tomorrow, is the second highest selling centre among twelve functional auction centres of the world (seven of them are in India) in terms of volume for CTC tea. In the first year, Guwahati Tea Auction Centre sold 9.1 million kg of tea at the average price of Rs. 5.68 per kg. GTAC created history by selling 204 million kg of tea in the year 2019-20 at the average price of Rs. 139.63 per kg.
In earlier days, GTAC used the Stadium Guest House (adjacent to Nehru Stadium) as the auction hall. That time the auction had an outcry system.
�From the 1960s, efforts were on way for establishment of the Tea Auction Centrer in Guwahati. A group of Assam�s best tea planters were determined despite all constraints that an auction centre must be set up and worked very fast towards the objective. Today, Guwahati Tea Auction Centre is proud to have its own building and world class infrastructure,� said secretary of the Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers Association Dinesh Bihani.
�Guwahati Tea Auction Centre was born out of the sustained efforts of a few forward thinking Assamese tea planters, namely Jayanta Kumar Barooah, Hemendra Prasad Barooah and a few senior administrative officers led by late Dharmananda Das,� said Jahnabi Phookan, national president, FLO - the women�s wing of FICCI.
Following global digitization, GTAC also adopted the trend and in the year 2010 when Tea Board of India introduced an e-platform for buying and selling tea as a Pan India Auction System, GTAC became the first auction centre in India to sell its tea globally and introduced a digital prompt payment system.
Recently, the auction centre also introduced a GTAC Tea Lounge where the best quality Assam tea from the finest gardens of Assam are available for buying and tasting.
