A tea company from India is making efforts to put fine leaf count (FLC), which symbolizes the best quality in tea, back on the table of the tea world.
According to the Tocklai Tea Research Association, fine leaf count is defined as the pluck of two leaves and a bud, which translates into the best quality in tea.
And according to industry experts, harvesting is an art, where experienced tea pluckers demonstrate their skill of only plucking the finest, most potent leaf on top of the bush. The “two leaves and a bud” referred to as “fine Leaf,” has for long symbolized the rich taste and quality derived from catechins and theanine – two vital compounds and natural antioxidants that are abundantly present.
“High fine leaf count is the only way to produce high quality tea, in the forgotten way of making the teas, that made Assam and Nilgiris [are] proud [of] in days gone by,” said Iron Kettle CEO George Thomas, based in Bengaluru, India.
A tea industry expert said it is still possible to get 70 to 75 percent fine leaf count in tea, which used to be common some time back. “We have to go back to the basics, which calls for concentrating on quality over quantity. Quality is made in the fields and the various field and agronomic practices which go by it.” he said.
The Iron Kettle model is based on the premise that a return to the forgotten art of making great teas that India was famous for will bring back the quality that was the benchmark of the teas originating from Assam and Nilgiris, according to Thomas.
“Iron Kettle believes that the best green leaf can only come from passionate small tea growers, whose small size allows them to pluck fine, pluck more frequently,” he said. “With this high-quality raw material, Iron Kettle lays the foundation from which the best teas of the world are produced.”
Mission: From Small Tea Growers to Respected Special Tea Growers
Iron Kettle Private Limited was set up by Menterra Venture Advisors in 2022 to develop a working model to demonstrate that the small farmer need not, in all instances, be a victim of the size of his land holding.
“The endeavor at Iron Kettle is to invert the adverse asymmetry of the small tea grower’s size to one where his small land holding catapults him to a special tea grower, no longer a bit player in the US$25 billion global tea industry, but that tiny microcosm who defines the standard for the best on offer on the high table of the tea world," said Thomas, noting that his company’s journey or mission is to make the small tea grower a respected special tea grower.
Thomas explained that the Iron Kettle brand carries FLC on each pack that it markets, a roundel or medallion that declares the exact fine leaf count that went into that pack. It guarantees an FLC from 60 to 70 percent. Producing teas that have an FLC in that range is considered excellent, according to some industry standards.
Iron Kettle currently sources green tea leaves from around 600 small tea growers from Assam, Nilgiris and Nepal. “Last year, the company bought 150 MT of green leaf and paid our farmers around Rs 45 lakh, and this year we will be procuring 3,000 MT, and small farmers will be getting Rs nine to 10 crore for the green leaf we source from them” noted Thomas.
Not only that, but Iron Kettle is taking another step forward. “Each pack we market has a QR code that gives the details of each small farmer who has contributed to that lot of tea,” shared Thomas. “The quantity he supplied, the fine leaf count of the green leaf that he brought to us. All of this made possible by Iron Kettle’s investment into a high-quality traceability software solution.”
Iron Kettle currently works with U.S.-based the digital agriculture and food traceability platform, Source Trace, to put together an architecture for the digital traceability of its tea.
“Like the best bakers in the world, [who] toil to find the best wheat for their breads, and the sushi chef [who] seeks the best catch of the day for serving exquisite sushi to his customers, Iron Kettle seeks the best green leaf to produce the teas it will market under its brand name,” Thomas said.
A Structured Roadmap to Success
At Iron Kettle, growers are educated on getting their field practices aligned with known best practices. These interventions are centered on implementing a seasonal bush management plan to ensure the best physiology for the bushes, creating a pathway to safe tea, improving plucking practices to get the bush to generate higher yields for the small tea, and handling the post-harvest leaf in a manner that does not diminish value of the precious harvest.
Siddartha Sharma, a manufacturing consultant with Iron Kettle, who has been instrumental in reviving poor quality tea gardens in Assam, and who was on his first visit to BorNoi, said, “I was awestruck to see workers' knowledge about fine leaf count. At Iron Kettle, there is a link between the farm and the factory. Growers know what kind of leaf they have plucked and can see its impact on the tea quality.”
Abhijeet Hazarika, also a consultant with Iron Kettle, said process control will be the backbone, as without that, it will be difficult to realize value.
Growers like Biswajit Debnath and others at the BorNoi bought-leaf factory in the Udalguri district of Assam, who do not know much about scientific tea plucking, have recently learned a lot about the art of fine plucking, what is fine leaf count, and this has led to better incomes for them.
Creating Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO)
Iron Kettle recently proposed working with Samunnati Foundation, a pioneer in organizing farmers into collectives across India. In fact it, the company would like to use the farmer producer organizations format to organize and collectivize the small growers in their journey to become special growers.
The relationship between Iron Kettle and the special tea grower must never be one of perpetual dependence, according to Thomas. The organization of the small tea growers in the first FPO at BorNoi in Udalguri in Assam is intended to define the relationship between Iron Kettle, its contract manufacturing facility, and the small tea grower, in a manner that there is a symbiotic relationship between the three constituents.
“Iron Kettle would eventually like to have the FPOs manage their own factories with assured buy-back of manufactured teas from small energy efficient factories,” said Thomas. “To this end, Iron Kettle has started the design process for a small 75 MT factory in South India that will use the tea sourced from its small tea grower base to produce world class teas. The design of the factory is being done by experts to secure the targeted output at the lowest energy use per kg of tea produced."
Thomas added “Iron Kettle hopes to commercialize this plant during 2023. Once operational, Iron Kettle will help its FPOs to forward integrate into manufacturing of high-quality teas, building small factories similar to the prototype being developed in South India by Iron Kettle, and use Iron Kettle’s marketing network to secure the best prices for their produce.”
The company is also expanding its product range and is launching its products in the United States and the United Kingdom soon.
To learn more about Iron Kettle, visit Iron-Kettle.com.
Roopak Goswami has worked for more than two decades as a newspaper journalist in Northeast India. Tea is his passion, and he covers the global tea industry regularly for World Tea News.
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