Tata Tea, the country’s largest integrated tea company, has relaunched its flagship brand Tata Tea with an emphasis on the quality of the tea, packaging and communication.

“The unorganised sector has fragmented and commoditised the entire tea market by continuous price-cutting measures. But we want to buck this trend and hence this is the right time for our brand to reposition itself,” Percy Siganporia, deputy managing director of Tata Tea, said.

He said the brand had lost a volume market share in the last two to three years and now, with its repositioning, Tata Tea hopes to take on the unorganised sector in the Indian tea market.

Interestingly, in order to capture a significant market share in Mumbai and the Maharashtra region, Tata Tea has revised its prices downwards for “Tata Tea” with the 250 gm pack now available for Rs 46 instead of the earlier Rs 49 and the 500 gm pack for Rs 90 (Rs 96 previously). Siganporia said the company offered regional blends and tastes across the nation.

The company aims to increase the market share of Tata Tea by one per cent during the next 12 months to inch towards a 7.7 per cent share in the branded tea segment of the country.

“As per ORG-Marg figures for September 2002, our current market share is 6.7 per cent in terms of volume and, after the repositioning of the Tata Tea brand, we aim to surge forward by 0.5 per cent each in the coming two six-monthly cycles,” Siganporia added.

HLL’s Red Label has a market share of 6 per cent, while Taaza has a share of 6.3 per cent.

Tata Tea has three research and development centres located in Assam, Munnar and Bangalore.

Tata Tea has five tea brands along with their regional variants. It has 55 tea estates producing 60 million kg of tea.