Automated tea

The 124 year-old Colombo Tea Auction, after years of debate, is finally to be automated.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce said the Colombo Tea Trader’s Association has selected Millennium Information Technologies (MIT) in a partnership to automate the Colombo Tea Auction.

“The aim of the partnership between the Colombo Tea Traders’ Association and MIT is to evolve a auction system unique to the Colombo trade embodying and enhancing the positive features of the Colombo Tea Auction built up over the years,” the chamber statement said adding that tea auction centres in Kenya and India have automated to varying degrees with different levels of success.

The need to expedite the automation process follows the increasing number of grades at the auction to meet buyer demand. Buyers struggle to taste, grade and evaluate up to 12,000 different lots of tea during the non-auction says of the week.
There has been a lot of debate over automation and ‘dollarising’ (trading in US dollars) at the Colombo auction.