After selling its stake in iconic tea brand Typhoo in the UK last month, Apeejay Surrendra Group, which has a presence across hospitality, logistics tea and retail, is known to be in the advance stage of talks with a south Indian company to sell a majority of its pie — around 60% — in Apeejay Tea, its tea holding arm. A source close to the development told TOI that if all goes well the South Indian tea estate owner on Wednesday will ink a deal with the Kolkata-based business conglomerate, which owns as many as 17 estates in Assam.
Meanwhile, the tea industry is abuzz with the latest acquisition deal involving Apeejay Group, one of the oldest tea majors in India. “There is a strong rumour that the controlling interest in Apeejay Tea is changing hands on Wednesday and the new buyer is somebody connected to the Paul family. Reportedly, the south Indian group has a business link in the UK,” said a tea industry insider, who has been following the development.
A top tea exporter in the city, however, termed this news as a rumour but confirmed that the group has been trying to offload the burden of its tea business.
Apeejay has exited the loss-making UK business of Typhoo by selling its stake to a group of private equity (PE) players in order to stop a series of fresh infusion of funds that was required to revive the 120-year-old tea brand. The group had bought Typhoo from Premier Foods for £80 million in 2005. However, the licence to sell teas under the Typhoo brand in India remains with Apeejay.
Founded in 1910 in Jalandhar, the Apeejay Surrendra Group is one of India’s oldest business conglomerates having an employee count of 43,000. The group’s business interests range from plantations to tea brands and cafes.
During the last two decades or so, Indian tea producers have been plagued by low price realisation, high cost of production, climatic change, ageing bushes, political unrest, paucity of skilled labour, infrastructural bottlenecks and the illegal influx of cheaper tea from Nepal. The Covid-19 lockdown has added to the wounds by reducing crop output by over 15% in the peak quality period of March to June.
One of the top tea producers based in Kolkata feels only a very serious tea player with proper management in place would buy a tea estate amid this situation.
