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This review details on tea industry supply chain in Pakistan. A thorough review has been carried out fromrawmaterialimport,suppliernetworkdesign,enhancingvaluedeliverystrategyetc.Comparisons have been discussed on tea sales and distribution strategies adopted by major players in the market. Majorsupplychainissuesarediscussedandfewrecommendationsaremade.
Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................3 Supply Chain Diagram..................................................................................................................................4 Tea Plant Growers ........................................................................................................................................4 . Suppliers.......................................................................................................................................................5 Tea Importers................................................................................................................................................5 Tea Manufacturing / Processing...................................................................................................................6 Issues.............................................................................................................................................................7 Global tea market trends...............................................................................................................................7 Encircling vs. Gorilla Strategy - Tea Competitors Strategy Analysis ..........................................................8 . Distribution Strategy and Distribution Network Design...............................................................................9 Distribution & Sales - Tapal.....................................................................................................................9 Distribution & Sales - Lipton Yellow Label.............................................................................................9 Tapal Tea..................................................................................................................................................9 Distributors.........................................................................................................................................11 Value Delivery Network.........................................................................................................................12 Wholesalers............................................................................................................................................12 Retailers..................................................................................................................................................12 Consumers..............................................................................................................................................12 Recommendation - Enhancing Value Delivery Network of Tea................................................................13 References...................................................................................................................................................14
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tea are also being smuggled to supplement the supplies to satisfy the ever-growing demand. According to a moderate estimate about 50,000 to 65,000 tonnes of tea are making inroads into Pakistan each year.
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sold in the market mainly through wholesale. Such tea is mainly supplied to places such as hotels and restaurants that provide free tea. 3. Tea growers process fresh leaves into tea and sell it themselves. On the one hand, tea growers sell their roughly processed tea to refineries, brand tea factories and businessmen that come to their place to buy tea. On the other hand, tea growers further process crude tea into highend tea and sell it in the township or countylevel retail market. In the genuine tea areas, as the tea available is limited but expensive, dealers and consumers will also go to the tea growing households to buy tea directly. There is another different distribution channel, which consists of tea growers, brand owners and consumers. The brand owners here refer to comprehensive tea companies that engage in production, supply and marketing. Such companies usually have their own production bases and processing factories, and place orders to tea growers for fresh leaves and have their own tea chain stores directly selling tea products to consumers.
Suppliers
Tea industry is very much dependant on suppliers. Suppliers are considered to be the heart of the Tea Industry. All the companies like Tapal, Unilever and Tetley keep good terms with their supplier since the shortages might be harmful for the company. These companies have various suppliers and are not dependant on any single supplier but still the supply chain needs to be very strong in order to be in this competitive business.
Tea Importers
Various trade associations and traders import various types and grades of tea from various tea growing countries. These traders then sell the tea to the companies which further process and package tea. The major buyer of such importers is the multinationals like Unilever for their various brands like Lipton, Brooke Bond etc. Local tea companies like Tapal also purchase from these importers and sometimes they themselves have their links in the tea growing countries.
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Fig 3 Types of Tea Processing The tea processing basically constitutes operations like blending of raw imported tea into different blends depending upon the brand and then packaging into different packages and different blends as offered by the company. Tapal a major player in the tea industry of Pakistan has following flow diagram.
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Tapal has two production units one in North and the other in south. In the facility, blending of tea and then its packaging is carried out. Tapal has state of the art production units, with most modern production control techniques. Some statistics of the Tapal production units is as under: Cycle time to produce a product: 1 Minute -120 Sachets 1 Minute - 55 to 60 soft pack hard pack 1 Minute - 18 to 20 pouch After production / blending of tea packaging is carried out into different packets, boxes and sachets etc. Packaging material for Tapal teal is procured from following sources: Gadun Amazai Rehman Packages Best Packages Packages Ltd. Fazli Sons MNF
Issues
The major issue in the tea industry is the bad practice of hoarding in any of the links of the supply chain. The effect of such hoarding is that the prices rise. But going down the supply chain such artificial shortage compels the links down to look for alternate sources and when the sources are available the bubble burst effect comes into play which damages the whole supply chain of the tea industry. Another issue faced by Pakistan is that Pakistan is not a tea growing country and due to the constant devaluation of Rupee, Pakistan has to spend more in foreign exchange to obtain raw tea from the tea growing countries. The Government policies are also lacking interest and motivation to encourage local entrepreneurs to start tea farming.
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level, as well as plucking methods and improvement in processing and automation of factories. The increasing production of tea does not necessarily mean that the quality of tea is improving.
Fig 5 World production and consumption of tea [tea production - tea consumption] Source: VNKT, 2004 Although supply exceeds demand, no further decline of international tea prices took place in 2003. The international tea market price may have passed its low, according to the VNKT. This is partly explained by promising expectations of improving exports to Iraq and higher local demand in India.
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planned Gorilla attacks to a frontal attack which Brooke Bond and Lipton were unable to defend because of being engage in fighting for their market share with each other, and under estimating a brand which was few years ago a shop in Jodia bazaar. Now Tapal is playing defensive strategies against Brook Bond who are imitating their supply chain strategies and they are attacking Lipton which has reached a saturation point and that presents opportunities for Tapal to gain control of that territory the Lipton has been able to manage.
Tapal Tea
The distribution objective of Tapal is to maximize its market coverage. To accomplish this Tapal has a wide distribution network of 410 distributors across Pakistan. Tapal has a wider distribution coverage in the South where as Unilever has better distribution in the North. Therefore, Tapals main objective is to increase their sales in the North. It ensures that it places
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its tea in the same outlets as its competitors in order to maximize availability. The distrib n o s o bution coverage of Tapal is as follows: e
Source:Li iptonReport Karachi 14% K Lahore 34% L Is slamabad 18% % Su ukkur 22% Hyderabad 12% H % NationalUn niversityofSc ciences&Tec chnologyPakistan
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Distributors Tapal deals only with distributors on contract basis with no other intermediaries involved. They do not extend credits to their primary customers and all their sales are mainly cash based. The contract comprises of a specification of a complete volume of the market, Tapals share in the market, the profit margin of the distributor, the sales that will be made by the distributor, as well as the complete route plan of the distribution network. Tapal chooses their distributors after analyzing their complete financial background and Public Relations. They provide the distributors with a detailed description of the distribution network; all the costs and expenses involved and when the distributor agrees the contract is signed. This contract involves the condition that the distributor has to be brand loyal, pro-active and cannot deal with other tea companies otherwise the contract will be terminated. The contract includes a clause that describes its termination process. Either of the two parties: Tapal and the distributor, can terminate the contract on one month basis.
Company
Distributor
Wholesellers
Retailers
Universities
Restaurants/ Institutions
Offices
Households
ENDUSERS/APPLICATIONSOFPRODUCTS
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Wholesalers
Retailers
Consumers
After the product is made, it is taken by the distributors who distribute the final product all over Pakistan. The wholesalers take the products in large bulks from the factory on a fixed profit margin and then sell it to other channels like retailers of general store, super stores, beauty shops etc. who then sell the product to final consumers. These distributors are not permanent but when the product is about to enter the market, they are informed about it and they themselves buy it in any quantity they want (usually a fixed volume set by the company). As for the retailers, it is also their wish in how much volume they would buy the product because sometimes they already have large inventory and sometimes they have small volume to serve consumer demands. The profit margin between the retailers and distributors is decided amongst themselves because usually retailers can sell the product up to 15-20% profit margin, So some of the profit has to be shared with the distributors also.
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References
Lipton Report Supply Chain Report Tapal Tea Marketing Report Tapal Official Website of Tapal Tea & Lipton Pak Tea House Economic Survey of Pakistan
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