From December to March, there is no tea production or tea picking and one would think everyone can go on holiday. But, it's quite the opposite as all the maintenance work, both in the fields and the factory, take place at this time of the year.
We are also currently putting up a new factory at Khongea to support all the small growers in the region who sell their leaf to estates like us that have extra capacity. We called some of them for a meeting and discussion on the best practices to ensure we produce high-quality AND responsibly-grown tea. As we don’t have any control over how these small growers “grow” their tea, it's been very interesting interact with them and see how we can motivate them to follow the same good practices that we insist on within our own estates.