Tata hoped that the plan that is currently awaiting the approval of Calcutta High Court would follow the success of the same model that the company has adopted in its south Indian plantation holdings, whereby 17 estates owned by the Tatas were handed over to the employees of the tea gardens for operations. The group plans to remain a strategic investor in APPL, and encourage alternate cultivation patterns like floriculture and pisciculture in the estates.

The Tata group holds 20 tea gardens in Assam and four in the Dooars region of West Bengal. “Under our control the estates were running at losses, but after employees took over, the plantations have recorded a profit of Rs 8 crore in 2006-07 and the trend is likely to continue this year as well,” Tata said. “We hope that the plantations of north India would also become profitable after the reconstruction.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the AGM, Tata Tea vice-chairman R K Krishna Kumar spoke on the possibilities of expansion through JV in Russia. “We are doing market studies and talking to potential partners in Russia for the venture,” he said.

The new entity, which is likely to be a 50:50 venture, would be a manufacturing unit with tea, coffee and other value-added tea-based beverages in its portfolio. The firm would also be looking at the prospects of exporting from this unit to the nearby areas. The process of establishment of the joint venture is likely to commence before the end of the current fiscal, said Kumar.