1. Background

Agriterra and CTCF have been cooperating on different fields since 2012. From its inception in 2010, CTCF has developed into an organization with 101 member coops (representing more than 6000 tea farmers) with a combined market share of 25% in the orthodox tea in Nepal. CTCF has become a strong and well known federation both internally as well as in the field of lobby and advocacy and service provision to its members. The cooperation between Agriterra and CTCF in 2018 was focused on business development, marketing and lobby. In the recent years many of the members of CTCF have established a tea processing factory. These members are increasingly demanding CTCF to assist them in their marketing activities to sell the tea they produce. Most of the tea produced is being sold to middleman where the farmers are paid low prices. An Agripool assignment was conducted in July 2018 to concretize the plan of establishing a Marketing Facilitation Desk (MFD) by CTCF to address the demands of their members. The tea experts facilitating the assignment found that the tea of Illam is of high quality and can be sold in international markets. The MFD will focus on linkage of members' tea with the national and international buyers by conduction different promotional activities and attracting buyers in buying cooperative tea. MFD is charging 10% of the total price to make its business sustainable. CTCF has planned to sell 2000 kgs of members' tea through MFD in the period of January, 2020- December, 2020    

2. Activities

1. Business and Service Activities

• Promote tea in international market through online marketing
• Visit to 5 national stores /cooperatives per month for marketing
• Update website of CTCF
• Visit to 5 districts for joint market promotion with 10 members cooperatives
• Update database of 150 potential buyers
• Organize quality and hygiene training to 8 coalition coop
• Collect and dispatch of tea samples to the 20 potential international buyers
• Meeting with chain stores and restaurant
• Internship : Study on local market promotion of orthodox tea
• Conduct strategic plan workshop in line with A.1

Lobby and Advocacy Activities

• Finalize Policy Proposal
• Submit Policy Proposal to NTCDB, Ministry of Agricultural, Ministry of Commerce