The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) is a tea trading and auction facility located in Guwahati, the largest city of Assam in north-east India. It serves as one of the principal marketplaces for the sale of CTC (crush, tear, curl) tea produced in the tea gardens of Assam and neighbouring regions, and is regarded as among the leading tea auction centres in the world by volume of CTC tea handled.
| Name | Guwahati Tea Auction Centre |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | GTAC |
| Type | Tea auction centre |
| Location | Guwahati, Assam, India |
| Primary commodity | CTC tea (with smaller volumes of orthodox and dust grades) |
| Operated under | Tea Board of India regulatory framework |
Tea auction centres in India function as organised marketplaces where producers, through registered brokers, offer tea lots that are inspected, valued and sold to buyers including domestic packeteers, wholesalers and exporters. The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre specialises in the sale of teas from Assam, the world's single largest tea-growing region by output, and provides a price-discovery mechanism for producers in the upper and lower Assam belts as well as parts of the north-eastern states.
Historically, Assam tea was sold predominantly through the Calcutta (now Kolkata) auction. The establishment of an auction centre at Guwahati was promoted to bring the marketplace closer to the producing region, reduce transport and handling costs for gardens in Assam, and develop allied infrastructure such as warehousing, broking and tasting facilities within the state. Once operational, GTAC grew to handle a substantial share of the national CTC crop and became central to the regional tea economy.
Auctions at GTAC follow the standard Indian tea auction process:
In common with other Indian auction centres, GTAC has progressively shifted from open outcry to electronic auctioning ("e-auction") on the platform notified by the Tea Board, which standardises bidding across centres in India.
GTAC plays an important role in the Assam tea industry by: