Kazi & Kazi Organic Tea has been awarded the National Export Trophy in the agricultural products category, the second time the estate has taken the country's highest export honour.
The trophy is judged on export value, growth, product quality and compliance record over the preceding financial year. The estate exported into fourteen markets, with Europe, Japan and North America accounting for the bulk of the volume, and closed the year with no compliance findings across any of its four certification regimes.
What sits behind the number
Bangladesh is not an obvious origin for premium organic tea, and the estate spent its first decade proving the category could exist here at all. Two thousand acres in Panchagarh have been farmed without a synthetic input since 2000, audited annually against USDA Organic, EU Organic, JAS and Fairtrade standards.
Nothing great has ever been accomplished without passion — but an export market is won on the audit, not the story behind it.
The award is shared with the estate's workforce and the growers around it, and with a buying market that was willing to pay for a certification long before it was fashionable to ask for one.