Technavio market research picks up on yet another indicator of the tea industry’s expanding search for premiumization: paper.
The main drivers are health-consciousness among consumers and supplier moves to use higher quality ingredients, extend shelf life freshness and improve quality control along the supply chain. Lightweight glassine paper offers a smooth and translucent appearance. It has “limited scope of contamination:” none of basic bag materials’ potentially toxic leeching of dioxin, epichlorohydrin and plastic chemicals, or decomposition of PET – polyelephylene terephthalate.
Glassine is superior in all areas: it looks good, is biodegradable, acid free, uncoated, and recyclable. Its porosity permits the use of larger leaf size than dust and fannings. This improves opportunities to provide flavor, aroma, brewing, and freshness.
A secondary factor is self-adhesive labeling. New demands include QR barcoding, detailed ingredient information, “asset” labels which include data for quality control and supply chain management and digital printing. Consumers want more customized information on the packaging. Providers need to add security protection against counterfeiting, up-to-date batch, and production data, and near field communications, the wireless signal tag used by scanners in stores, shipping and inventory management.
Better tea and better bags go together. You can easily see the difference in the bag, the packaging and the leaf.