There are fears that thousands of tea plantation workers in Yorkshire could lose their jobs as makers of Yorkshire Tea, Taylors of Harrogate, announced they are transferring tea farming to India. An announcement was made this morning to employees of the company which has left many in shock.

One told us, “It was shocking. We were marched into a room and told that tea farming would cease in December as they were moving it to India. They blamed the weak pound causing inflation and pushing wages up. We’re all going to be made redundant from January.”

Another told us, “I’ve no idea what I’m going to do. My family have been farming tea since the 18th century. I’ve never known any other life. I’ll probably have to move to Lincolnshire and look for work soft fruit picking or something.”

The tea plantation workers union told us, “This is disgraceful. The workers of this country are just being exploited by greedy fat cats who want to cut costs by moving production to India. We call on the Government to get involved and do all they can to reverse this decision.”

We tried to contact a spokesman for Taylors but they were unable to comment.

One industry analyst told us, “This could be bad for the company. Their image is built on the bucolic tea plantations of Yorkshire producing a uniquely British product. It’s a unique selling point that many of their customers buy into. This could be problem for their brand as many people believe they are drinking genuine tea grown in Yorkshire.”

 

Fact checked by Snopes; Plagiarised by Andrew Neil; Nancy Sinatra's favourite Rochdale satirist; sued by Chris Froome and winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.* *Not all of these necessarily true.