India’s Minister for Heavy Industries, Mahendra Nath Pandey, has praised record-breaking tea exports to the UAE and said, “this achievement is a testament to quality and innovation in the tea industry.”

Along with the UK and Poland, tea exports to the UAE by Andrew Yule and Company, the only government-owned enterprise in the tea industry, established in 1863, achieved “its highest-ever growth trajectory, with tea exports up by a phenomenal 431 percent in one year.”

The one-year period covers 1st April 2022 to 31st March this year, which marks the end of India’s fiscal year. The UAE, the UK and Poland are the main markets for tea produced by this Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE), which has 15 tea gardens spread over two states in eastern India.

These gardens produce specialty teas like moon drop, silver needle and oolong along with orthodox cut, tear, curl (CTC) teas.

CTC, the most widely consumed tea the world over, is a process in which, tea leaves are passed through a series of cylindrical rollers with hundreds of sharp teeth that crush, tear, and curl them into small, hard pellets ready for the connoisseurs’ cup.

Andrew Yule and Company has recently ventured into “tea tourism” with the establishment of its first tea resort at Darjeeling, which the government-owned enterprise plans to promote in the Gulf.