Guwahati, September 25 (PTI): The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) on Friday celebrated golden jubilee anniversary of its operations to market the commodity across the world.
The first auction at the GTAC was held on September 25 in 1970, an official said. "Today, we mark a golden day in the history of the Assam tea industry as the auction centre here completes 50 years of trading," Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers' Association Secretary Dinesh Bihani said.
The GTAC had sold 9.1 million kg of tea at an average price of Rs 5.68 per kg in the first year of its operations, while 204 million kg was auctioned during the 2019-20 fiscal at a mean price of Rs 139.63 per kg, he said.
Though the auction centre started its journey in 1970, efforts were on to establish such a unit in the city since the 1960s.
"Despite all the constraints, a group of tea planters in Assam were determined to set up an auction centre here and worked hard to realise their dreams. Now the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre has its own building and world-class infrastructure," Bihani said.
After receiving huge demand from the local tea planters to open an auction centre in Guwahati, the Assam government decided to open such unit on August 11, 1970, and appointed former chief secretary Dharmanda Das as the first chairman of its committee, he said.
"On opening day, the first lot of the commodity produced by Haroocharai tea estate was bought by Jafar Ali, proprietor of Diamond Tea Company in Jorhat in upper Assam," Bihani said.
Recalling its operations in earlier days, he said the GTAC used to organise auction at a guest house of the Nehru stadium here, but now it has two separate halls to facilitate buying and selling of tea.
The GTAC became the first auction centre in the country to sell tea globally and introduced a digital payment settlement system, he said. "Now we are the second-largest CTC auction centre in the world," he added.
