Tea producing enterprise "Cha", located in the village of Nagomari in Ozurgeti, is increasing its production. As the founder of the enterprise Andro Tavarkiladze noted in an interview with bm.ge, last year their plantation area increased from 4 to 15 hectares. According to him, they added 11 hectares of tea plantation within the state tea rehabilitation program, whose yield will increase in the coming years. Last year, the entrepreneur produced up to 2 tons of tea.
"The plantations are growing. We joined the tea rehabilitation program and added 11 hectares. This year we will start harvesting in small quantities from this plantation, and next year we expect more. We don't buy raw materials from others, as we don't use herbicides, this is how we maintain quality," - noted Andro Tavarkiladze.
In addition to black and green tea, company "Cha" produces blueberry tea, which they collect in the Guria mountains. "Cha" products are sold in several stores and also online. Andro Tavarkiladze cites entering the retail chains as one of the obstacles.
"We have home production, but it's not sufficient in size, we need to find an opportunity to develop in this direction. Since our plantation area has increased to 15 hectares, it means our production will also increase. We'll need to hire employees too. We started as a family business, now we only have seasonal workers," - said the head of the enterprise.
Regarding exports, "Cha" is currently only sold locally, however, Andro Tavarkiladze notes that he plans to enter the export markets in the future.
"We haven't started exporting yet. We have high-quality products, but we need to sort out the packaging part and then we'll think about the exports too. There's talk about exporting to the USA. We want to send our tea as a sample. However, we don't know if we'll manage this year, working with tea is labor intensive, and it requires a lot of resources. We have to deal with many things," - he said.
As Andro Tavartkiladze notes, more than GEL 300,000 has been invested in the production of "Cha" to date.
