Tea Report
Pandemic Reshuffles Tea Export Rankings
Global tea exports through the spring months of 2021 had not offset setbacks in 2020 when tea sales from all countries declined to $7.1 billion, a shortfall of -8.6% compared to 2019. Read more
Electronic Noses: the Emerging Science of Tea Aromas
Electronic noses are devices that, as the name implies, mimic human smelling and evaluation of aromas. For close to a decade, they have produced striking results in more and more areas of tea processing and quality management. Read more
Nayuki IPO: Global Plans for China Tea Chain
Investors could not get enough bubble tea as fruit, bubble, and cream-cheese tea chain Nayuki debuted with a US$656 million offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Read more
Sri Lanka Aims for Cleanest Tea in the World
Growers in Sri Lanka are furious at government officials who essentially cut off the supply of fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides in a broad and controversial edict to make the tea grown there pristine and profitable. Read more
Pandemic Powers Organic Food Sales
The Organic Trade Association reports that US sales of organic food and beverages set a record in 2020, growing 12.4% to $62 billion. The total includes organic food, which grew by 12.8% to $56.4 billion. Read more
Logistics in Disarray: Delivering Tea on Time
Covid-19 restrictions slowed processing but factory output remained steady and warehouse space quickly filled in producing countries. Ground transport remains severely limited in India... Read more
India Tea Dealt Double Blow
Little early-spring rainfall in Assam and West Bengal curtailed plucking and idled factories that are now contending with logistics challenges tied to a massive surge of Covid-19 infections. Many workers are on leave during the slowdown and lockdown. Read more
The Bosporus Tea Party: Turkish Tea Thrives in Lockdown
For a lot of Turkish people, life would be empty without the coffeehouse. In a country of 82 million people, coffeehouses function more as social clubs than mere places to sip a hot beverage. Read more
Tea Stands Out in Grocery
Center-aisle categories like tea rarely accelerate at growth rates faster than advertising-driven fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) categories – but that is exactly what happened in 2020. Read more
Tata Tea Pulls Out of US Foodservice
The sharp decline in tea sales to foodservice and office coffee distributors in 2020 forced many smaller specialty distributors to exit or consolidate. Read more
European Specialty Tea Association and Danish Tea Association to Merge
The Danish Tea Association, which has been promoting specialty tea in Denmark through education and competitions for five years, announced that its board voted to join European Specialty Tea Association (ESTA). Read more
Nepal Announces National Tea Traceability Project
Twenty years ago, Nepal's government turned its attention to tea both to alleviate rural poverty and generate foreign revenue from sustainably produced exports. Read more
White Tea: From Fuding, China to Malawi, Vietnam, and India
The demand for teas labeled as “white” is growing fast. Just a decade ago, the market was well defined: pedigree regional Chinese and a very few individual varieties from Sri Lanka and Kenya, with a narrow and distinctive growing, harvesting... Read more
India E-Auction Still in Disarray
Five years after going digital, the tea auctions in India remain in disarray. The Federation of All India Tea Traders (FAITTA) warns that price discovery Read more
Kenya Planters Prevail as Court Permits Mechanization
In February, Kenya's High Court ruled that labor unions cannot prevent tea planters from mechanizing tea harvesting despite the likelihood of lost jobs. Read more
Global Tea Initiative (GTI) Colloquium Spans Tea Culture and Science
Tea scholars publish reams of research that rarely find an audience beyond academic journals and small gatherings at symposiums. Read more
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