Mist rises with the morning sun over the historic tea plantations of Kerala, India, which were first planted in the Western Ghats mountains in 1896, during the British colonial era. These are just a fraction of the 31 square miles of black tea owned by the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company Ltd., one of the largest tea producers in India. Their most popular variety is processed by putting the fresh leaves through a series of cylindrical rollers that cut, tear, and curl the leaves into granules, which are then dried and packed into tea bags. The final product is an inexpensive black tea that dominates the market in India, the Middle East, the UK, and Russia. The company is owned by a partnership between the Tata Group and more than twelve thousand employee stockholders, making it one of the first employee-owned companies in India.
