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When Inchcape sold its overseas plantations in
1990-2, one proved less attractive to buyers. It
was Sangay, on the wrong side of a 200-yard-wide
river in Ecuador across which its tea has to be
carried in trolleys along a cable. Five Inchcape
executives decided to take Sangay on.
It now produces over l,000 tonnes of tea a year,
mainly exported to the United States, Europe and
Latin America. It generates a turnover of about
£1 million in an area without much income.
Colin Armstrong, who was responsible for
Inchcape’s tea plantations world wide, is now
Sangay’s chairman. His four partners are the Earl
of Inchcape who chairs a tea-marketing and
packaging company; Jim Thomas, who ran tea estates
in India; Martin Wollocombe, Inchcape’s manager in
Ecuador and Peter Wilson, now managing director,
who joined Inchcape when it took over Sangay from
Mitchell Cotts in 1984.
A
stretch of Ecuador, 3,000 feet up between the Andes
and the Amazon jungle, is similar to Kenya, which
is why Mitchell Cotts, looking for a new place to
grow tea and pyrethrum, chose it. Tea will grow
there all the year: there is no close season.
The firm left pyrethrum-growing to smallholders
but in 1962 set up the tea estate which it named
after a volcano 50 miles away. The Sangay estate
was in a scarcely inhabited area over 30 miles from
the nearest village. Indians came down from the
Andes to take the estate jobs. They also set up
smallholdings and built a town called Palora.
Sangay employs a doctor, with a daily clinic. It
has equipped two local schools for sports, and
built a chapel.
When Inchcape took over, it rehabilitated
Sangay, re-equipping its factory to produce CTC
(crush,tear and curl) tea, popular for teabags.
Colin Armstrong and his colleagues are extending
the estate to 550 hectares, which will fully employ
the factory.
They sell direct to packers, such as Liptons in
the United States. They also do some packing
themselves, selling in Ecuador and neighbouring
countries under the Horniman and Sangay brand
names.
Apart from Peter Wilson, the 100 people who work
for Sangay are Ecuadorian: Sangay gives training in
management and technical skills. In addition, local
groups which take on contracts to pick the tea
employ up to 200 people mainly women. Sangay is
criss-crossed with streams along which 40,000 trees
have been planted.
From the estate, the tea travels by lorry to the
river Pastaza. Once across, the tea sacks are
loaded in more lorries and carried over the Andes
to the port of Guayaquil. Colin Armstrong hopes
that road improvements will soon make it possible
to get containers to the Pastaza and simplify the
transport.
Sangay is also studying different tea bushes. No
one knows how long tea will continue to crop in
Ecuadorian conditions. In Assam it lasts 50 years
or more.
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