B.K. Birla with Jayshree Mohta in Calcutta on Thursday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, June 28: Jay Shree Tea & Industries Limited is open to selling its BPO division – Jay Shree Infotech — because it wants to focus on the tea business.

At the AGM today, which was marred by a fire, Jay Shree Tea shareholders and the board approved the merger of three tea subsidiaries with itself. Jay Shree Infotech is not sufficiently large to be profitable, according to D.M. Jain, managing director of Jay Shree Tea.

“We have recently expanded the number of seats at our BPO from 90 to 200. We have a state-of-the-art facility of over 14,000sqft in Sector V, Salt Lake. We have also acquired overseas clients. Still the scale is not profitable enough,” said Jain. The BPO is also struggling to cope with high attrition rates in the sector.

Jain said Jay Shree Tea would prefer to wait for the right buyer rather than go in for a distress sale.

He said the company expected at least Rs 10 crore from the sale of the BPO.

The number of gardens with the company increased to 23 from 18 following the merger of Darjeeling Consolidated Tea Ltd, Birla Tea Ltd and Marionbarie Tea Company with itself.

The combined production of the entities will marginally go up to 20mkg from 19mkg.

For 2006-07, the turnover of Jay Shree Tea was Rs 250 crore, with exports of Rs 40 crore.

Price realisation on all varieties have been higher in the last fiscal. For Darjeeling, the average price was Rs 222.83 per kg compared with Rs 213.8 per kg in the previous fiscal.

For Dooars/Terai, the price was Rs 67.21 per kg compared with Rs 55.3 per kg in the previous year.