A top Project India Blend, the company promoting the Nargis brand, official said that under the present circumstances, teas were hardly moving and sales had practically come to a standstill. This has prompted the company to concentrate more on other countries like Kazakhstan which is slated to have an almost 20-million kg market. This CIS country is also believed to have a penchant for Indian teas.

The company has already contracted half-a-million kg to this country by now. Plans are affot to focus more on this market which will help the company to partly offset the crisis of slack-buying from Russia. It may be recalled that `Nargis' -- a brand of Project India Blend, a company formed byfive top tea corporates including Tata Tea, Williamson Magor, Warrens, Goodricke and Rossell Industries -- was mooted to address to the need of an Indian brand of tea to Russia, once the largest importer of Indian teas.

This particular brand at present encompasses a whole gamut of teas including orthodox Assams, south Indian orthodox, CTC tea bags, Darjeelings in caddies, South Indian CTCs. It is marketed through Melgate Ltd who are distributors to many other products as well. "The earlier part of 1998 was a good time as we did considerably favourable business with Russia. But since August last year, Russian economic crisis had its impact on the company which was formed to cater premium teas to the largest importer Russia, said a company executive.

The last shipment was made in December, following which there has been no shipment of teas to that country. In fact, sellers have been withdrawing stocks due to poor demand conditions, he added.

"However, this situation may see an improvement in the monthsto come, perhaps from July and August onwards when the Russians would need enough stocks for the winter season", he felt.

Nargis brand caters to the upper end of the export market and is in competition with other existings brands like Dilmah, Twinings or Pickwick in Russia. Even this segment has been hit hard in the Russia. The value of rouble has devalued by over four times from 6 roubles to 25 roubles to a dollar, said the executive.

The company has set for itself an export target of five million kg by the year 2000. By current estimates, the company has exported almost three million kg of the brand upto now.

Meanwhile, promises of support from the India Brand Equity Fund of the government of India, meant exclusively for promotions of Indian brands abroad has remained a non-starter for the Nargis brand.

According to the official, the government stiff conditions of payment, repayment etc are pegged at high levels, which restricts the company for taking loans for promotional purposes. It may be notedthat following the central government's idea to float an India Brand Equity Fund (IBEF) for exclusive promotions of`Indian brands' abroad, with a corpus of over Rs 60 crore, the Tea Board had discontinued its loan for brand promotions.