London held its last tea auction yesterday bringing down the curtain on a 319-year tradition that began in the days of the East India Company and British imperial rule in India.
More than 200 tea brokers, blenders, journalists and onlookers crowded into a conference room at the London Chamber of Commerce for an emotional farewell at the auction of the last 400 tonnes of tea.
The 50-minute auction was a nostalgic occasion, but with many of the lots on offer failing to sell it illustrated clearly London's declining role as a tea auction centre.
With dwindling volumes and only two brokerage houses still involved in its auctions, London has surrendered its place over the years to major tea-producing countries like Kenya, India and Sri Lanka whose cities of Mombasa, Calcutta and Colombo now hold the world's biggest tea auctions.
London tea auctions began in 1679 under the East India Company and became weekly events at the height of the British Empire in 1834.
Back in 1971, 100,000 tonnes of tea per year were sold through the London auction - 60-70 per cent of UK consumption. But this has dropped to 20,000 tonnes in recent years.
Even in the 1970s the London auction sold only a fraction of the world's tea output, which was then approaching 1.4 million tonnes a year and is today around 2.6 million tonnes.
The London auction has become a small market and the amount of tea sold in origin countries is far greater.
Most of the UK tea trade is carried on privately between brokers and blenders. Traders believe the future is in electronic trading in some form. Traders are already using the internet, fax and telephones to do business.
