The biggest buyer was Teesta Valley Tea Company Limited with 12,000kg. Have you ever attended a manual tea auction? At 11.05am, the gavel came down before being silenced forever, this time in the hand of Subodh Paul, tea auctioneer at Paramount Tea Marketing Private Limited. After 155 years of cry-and-buy, the last day of manual tea auction commenced at 11 R N Mukherjee Road - home to the world's oldest and largest tea auction house, J Thomas and Company - from 9am. At the manual auctions, Darjeeling tea was sold at a speed of 2.2 lots per minute while the e-auctions will be able to put up five lots a minute.

Source: The Telegraph June 14, 2016 21:45 UTC