• Tea Biz Podcast | Episode 41

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    Hear the Headlines

    | Fairtrade International Predicts Climate-Related Disaster for Small Tea Farms
    | Chemical Fertilizer Supplies Disrupted
    | Holiday Helpers are in Short Supply

    Seven-minute Tea News Recap

    Tea Price Report
    Oct 23 – Sale 42

    India Tea Price Watch

    After a missed week of the auction, North India saw good demand in Kolkata, Guwahati, and Siliguri. Last week saw the highest weekly sale volume for 2021. In Kolkata, 83% of Orthodox tea on offer was sold, and the Middle East remained the top buyer. However, Darjeeling tea saw less uptake. In Guwahati, the market showed good demand for CTC and Orthodox teas, and major blenders were active. In Coonoor, buyers from North India were active, reportedly due to demand during Diwali, one of the biggest Indian festivals. Read more…

    Aravinda Anantharaman

    Features

    This week Tea Biz travels to Lincoln, England for a visit with Will Battle, author of “The World Tea Encyclopaedia” and managing director of Fine Tea Merchants, Ltd., a wholesale tea import and export venture that supplies tea merchants with mainstream offerings as well as rare teas and herbals.

    Will Battle on the unique costs of producing specialty tea.
    Will Battle details the additional costs of producing specialty tea.

    The Cost of Producing Specialty Tea

    By Dan Bolton

    Growers are taking initiatives on quality at all levels, blurring the lines between the everyday and specialty sectors, says tea wholesaler and author Will Battle. But is manufacturing specialty tea worth the effort?

    “Frequently it probably isn’t considering the amount that growers need to invest from a financial and human resources perspective to make the very best teas,” he says.

    The costs of producing the distinctive taste of the authentic, transparent, eco-friendly, clean-label formulations that are so popular with Millennial and Gen Z cohorts are significantly higher than what growers spend supplying conventional tea. A preference for chemical-free cultivation, third-party certifications, energy-efficient, carbon-neutral processing and transport, and recyclable and biodegradable packaging further erode margins along the length of the supply chain. Consumers who pay a premium at retail for specialty tea often leave growers to foot the bill. This raises a fundamental question: Is anyone making money making specialty tea? Read more…

    Listen to the review
    Will Battle on the costs and questionable return on investment for growers making specialty tea

    News

    A tea farm in Kerala, South India, one of several climate “hot spots”? identified by Fairtrade International

    Fairtrade International: Small Tea Growers Face Climate-Related Financial Disaster

    Limited access to capital will make it difficult for farmers to finance adaptations to changing climate that will generally lower yield, reduce tea quality, and lead to more instances of catastrophic failure in tea “hotspots” globally.

    By Dan Bolton

    According to Fairtrade International, a hotter and drier climate poses a severe financial threat to millions of farmers in major tea-growing regions.

    The third-party certification organization released a 148-page report ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland (COP26). Fairtrade CEO Nyagoy Nyong’o called the study’s results “extremely alarming and a clarion call for immediate and comprehensive climate action.”

    The study assessed climate impacts on bananas, cocoa, coffee, cotton, sugarcane, and tea producers. Juan Pablo Solis, Fairtrade’s senior advisor for climate and environment, said, “the way climate change affects the planet is extraordinarily complex.” He cited “mounting challenges that they [Fairtrade International certified farmers] face if the international community continues to fail them.” 

    In summarizing the impact on tea, the authors state that tea-producing locations will be subject to considerable increases in the number of days of extreme temperatures, especially under the high emissions scenario.

    Read more…

    Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) are described in two climate scenarios through 2050. RCP4.5 is the current trajectory, and RCP8.5 is the more extreme scenario. RCP4.5 assumes global mitigation will enable the atmosphere to stabilize by 2100. RCP8.5 presents a future where mitigation efforts fail and greenhouse gases remain high.
    Smallholder spreading fertilizer by hand on tea farm

    Chemical Fertilizer Supplies Disrupted

    By Dan Bolton

    Closure of fertilizer manufacturing plants in the UK and record-high prices approaching $1,000 per short ton in North America foretell cutbacks as global food prices reach a 10-year high. There are ample stocks and capacity, but timely arrival is a concern due to the shipping crisis and fertilizer prices are prohibitively high for some applications due to rising energy costs.

    China, the world’s largest agrochemical manufacturer by tonnage, cut output due to rising energy prices but has since allowed manufacturers to maintain high operating rates to meet domestic food security requirements. Fertilizer exports surged in 2021 with a total of 10.8 million metric tons during the first eight months of the year, an increase of 46% compared to the same period in 2020. In July China suspended phosphate exports and in August exports declined by 26% to 2.78 million metric tons.

    As prices spike across a broad range of plant nutrients European growers say they may be forced to idle croplands or plant less fertilizer-dependent crops than corn, for example.

    In the US the price of urea increased 26% in the past month reaching $0.80/lb.N [per pound of Nitrogen] with anhydrous at $0.57/lb.N., an average $940 per ton. Potash is up 15% compared to September.

    Biz Insight – The disruption is troubling because tea is a very demanding plant requiring 300-450 kilos of Nitrogen per hectare for high-quality shoots plus three secondary nutrients and 10 trace elements. No soil in any part of the world can continuously provide full nourishment for plants producing economically significant yields without fertilizer.

    Holiday workers are in short supply
    Holiday workers are in short supply

    Holiday Retail and Delivery Workers in Short Supply

    Workers in US retail and warehouse fulfillment are in high demand and short supply as major employers’ staff up for the holidays.

    Seasonal culinary workers, delivery drivers, and retail clerks are among the 4.3 million “missing workers” unable or unwilling to return to work, according to the Wall Street Journal. Money Magazine notes that 10% of seasonal job postings on Indeed.com include the description “urgent.”

    Amazon expects to hire 150,000 seasonal workers (up 50% from 2020) and is paying an average of $18 per hour. Supervisors can qualify for $3,000 signing bonuses in key slots. UPS is advertising warehouse and package-handler jobs at $22 per hour. Walmart, Target, and FedEx round out the top five seasonal employers with a combined 600,000 slots to fill.

    In response, smaller retailers and cafés are offering additional hours and more stable work hours to existing employees, investing in staff training, and promising to transition the most promising new hires to full-time work in 2022. New hires are requesting more flexibility and benefits. The shortage means seasonal and full-time job seekers have greater leverage this year to negotiate bonuses and benefits and wages greater than $15 per hour.

    Biz Insight – There are 10 million US job openings as workers quit at the highest rates on record. Nearly 50% of US adults in a recent LinkedIn survey said the pandemic has changed how they feel about their careers. Of those who view their careers differently, 73% said they felt less fulfilled in their current jobs. The greatest decline in the eligible worker participation rate is among women, workers without a college degree, and those in low-paying service industries such as hotels, restaurants, and childcare, according to the Wall Street Journal. Pandemic accelerated early retirements among those 55 and older is a trend that economists say is unlikely to reverse.

    — Dan Bolton

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  • The Cost of Producing Specialty Tea

    Consumers who pay a premium at retail for specialty tea often leave growers to foot the bill. The costs of producing the distinctive taste of the authentic, transparent, eco-friendly, clean-label teas that are so popular with Millennial and Gen Z cohorts are significantly higher than what growers spend supplying conventional tea. A preference for chemical-free cultivation, third-party certifications, energy-efficient, carbon-neutral processing and transport, and recyclable and biodegradable packaging further erode margins along the length of the supply chain. This raises a fundamental question: Is anyone making money making specialty tea?


    Listen to the interview

    Will Battle discusses the additional expense of producing the best specialty teas
    Artisan teas require time and hands-on attention to detail
    Artisan teas require time and hands-on attention to detail that add significant costs. Photo courtesy Folklore Tea.

    An Investment in Quality

    In this post, Will Battle, author, consultant, and enthusiast for all things tea describes the additional costs to growers producing top-quality tea. Will trained as a taster in India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Malawi and has more than 20 years of experience sourcing tea. He is the author of “The World Tea Encyclopaedia” and founder and managing director of Fine Tea Merchants, Ltd., a wholesale tea importer and export venture that supplies tea merchants with mainstream offerings as well as rare teas and herbals. Will sees growers taking initiatives on quality at all levels of the cultivation and manufacture process and so regards the lines between the everyday and specialty sectors to be blurred, but here he focuses on the costs of creating the very best teas.

    Dan Bolton: Will, from a grower’s perspective, is manufacturing specialty tea worth the effort?

    Will Battle: I think frequently it probably isn’t. I look at some of the growers I deal with and the amount that they need to invest from a financial and human resources perspective and it’s so much greater in almost every area.

    Costs are higher at pretty much all stages of the chain. In my experience, Dan, whether it’s the approach to pruning, to leaf quality stipulated to pluckers, or to those buying leaf on the open market; the level of detail that the factory needs to apply to the processing of the leaf, right on through storage, shipping, all of those processes costs a lot more in the specialty tea industry.

    I struggle to see many instances where that’s appropriately rewarded.

    Dan: Let’s talk specifics, what costs are unique to producing specialty tea?

    Will: Let’s take Darjeeling for example, and their approach to the pruning cycle. A good case in point would be my experience with Jay Shree’s Darjeeling this year. They pruned more than they did in previous years, more than most other producers.

    That effectively writes off your first flush, but it might give you a better second flush, and then next year, you probably have an improved quality as well. But to write off your first flush is just an enormous financial handicap to impose on yourself and that’s your start point.

    Now consider the costs of for a kilo of fine plucked leaf. Let’s take the experiences of Tumoi in Nandi, Kenya.

    • In Part II Tea Biz will interview brands and category managers on costs they incur in bringing specialty tea to market.

    It might be seen in the wage pricing of seven to nine Kenyan shillings an hour for mainstream leaf, but around 25 [shillings] per hour for specialty leaf. You see, you’ve not even got the leaf to the factory yet and you’ve got an enormous margin to make up in the final product cost. And don’t forget, you’ve got 4.2 to 4.6 kilos of your green leaf for a kilo of made tea. So you’ve, got a big headway to make up on the final product cost and you haven’t even got the leaf  to the factory yet.

    Another example might be transport. The traditional way of getting green leaf to the factory might be to dump it in a pickup. But at Tumoi, in Nandi, they put it in some special aerated baskets to get it to the factory in optimal condition and that’s two or three pickup trucks getting the leaf there rather than one or a tractor adding fuel costs and wages. So again, another increment onto the final product cost.

    Packaging is a really, really good point. Let’s take Satemwa Tea Estate in Malawi. They are a great example because they make mainstream tea and they make some lovely specialty tea as well. The mainstream tea which I buy and use happily in my blends is lovely tea, but it’ll come in a paper sack and you get 60 kilos in a sack and more or less a ton on a pallet.

    The specialty tea. In fact, I’ve got one here that four is kilos net, eight kilos, 8.2 kilos, gross. So you’re shipping more air than product. And it’s in an expensive cardboard carton. So you can probably get nine of those on a pallet that’s just 720 kg in a 40-foot container. That means that the freight alone is almost $5.

    So when you get a freight rate increase like we’ve had this year, you have to automatically add another dollar to the cost. So that’s another cost and, here again, you’re not even taking into account the tea cost yet.

    The product that everyone wants is whole leaf. But for every kilo of whole leaf there is perhaps 25% waste or broken leaf that people won’t pay up for. It’s not as if every kilo that goes out of the factory is getting rewarded at the top price, because there’ll be some by-product as well. I think that is another instance where these guys aren’t always appropriately remunerated.

    It’s easy sometimes to say, I include myself in this, that we were supporting the specialty industry, but supporting the specialty industry is also remembering those other grades that they’re making, the leaf grades where they’re not always recovering a high margin on.

    You can go on and on. I see higher costs right through the process, along every stage of the supply chain but particularly labor because of the attention to detail, and in packaging, because of the attention to quality.

    Dan: When consumers pay a premium for specialty tea, what is the value received?

    Will: I think you’re ultimately investing in quality and an approach to creating a product, that is the best it can be. It’s worth remembering that those people who are making good specialty tea are also improving their mainstream quality as well.

    A large proportion [of that investment] should end up back in the communities that have spent the time in trying to create it for you. So wherever that specialty tea comes from ? whether it’s Japan, Darjeeling, Assam, Dimbula, or Malawi ? that investment in the regions and the districts where the tea is made is something really worthwhile.

    Dan: Why is it good practice to pay farm gate prices that allow sustainable production not just for specialty tea, as you mentioned, but commodity tea as well?

    Will: It’s a good practice because ultimately, we have an obligation to make sure our industry survives and that is reliant upon the people who grow and pluck and process tea. If we don’t pay a sustainable price, they will do something else. Without an appropriate farmgate price we don’t have an industry in my view, and it’s our obligation to make sure that any producer is appropriately remunerated.

    Otherwise, why would you grow it?

    A. Tosh & Sons tea warehouse
    UK-based Fine Tea Merchants partners with India-based A. Tosh and Sons, enabling multiple formats of tea bag and caddy packing as well as bulk exports from internationally accredited manufacturing facilities.

    Fine Tea Merchants

    FTM is a business-to-business supplier of tearooms, tea merchants and small packers in the UK, Continental Europe and further afield. The company imports direct from origin and stores a broad assortment of teas and botanicals in its warehouse in Lincolnshire. FTM specializes in fine and rare teas as well as high quality, mainstream teas and a selection of flavored-, herbal-, and fruit-blends.

    Tea may be ordered in quantities from 1 kilo to multiple containers and shipped as straight-lines, blends formulated to perform well in your local water, or custom blended against your own recipe.

    The World Tea Enclopaedia

    The award-winning book The World Tea Encyclopaedia was published in January 2017, with a second edition in November 2020. It covers every tea-producing country and advises tea lovers on tea cultivation and manufacture, origin, seasonality and local ‘terroir’ and tries to de-bunk tea myths and snobbishness. ? Will Battle

    Publisher: Troubador Publishing
    Hardback | 400 pages | £22.96

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  • Tea Biz Podcast | Episode 40

    Tea Biz Podcast Logo

    Listen on your favorite player

    Hear the Headlines

    | Sri Lanka Abandons Fertilizer Import Ban
    | Kenya’s KTDA Sets a Minimum Price for Auctioned Tea
    | AVPA Announces Teas of the World Contest Winners

    Seven-minute Tea News Recap

    Tea Price Report
    Oct 16 – Sale 41

    India Tea Price Watch

    Tea Board of India data indicates a 14.4% decrease in tea exports between January and July 2021 as compared to this period last year. With Kenya’s KTDA fixing the minimum reserve price at $2.43 per kilo at the Mombasa auction, the difference in price between Indian teas (priced between $3-4) and Kenyan teas has narrowed to India’s advantage. North Indian auctions were closed last week for Dusshera while South India saw better uptake of dust tea. Read more…

    Aravinda Anantharaman

    Features

    This week Tea Biz travels to Calcutta, India for an in-depth conversation with Harkirat (Harki) Sidhu, Rainforest Alliance India’s Consulting Program Coordinator for Sustainable Landscapes & Livelihoods. Harki is an expert in mechanical tea harvesters. He makes a compelling argument for improving tea quality using labor hours gained on farms that invest in these time-saving machines.

    Harkirat Sidhu
    Harkirat “Harki” Sidhu discusses the quality advantage of mechanical harvesting

    Mechanical Tea Harvesting

    By Dan Bolton

    Mechanical harvesting gets a bad rap. This is because poorly trained operators using poorly maintained equipment damage bushes, lowering yield and leaf quality. Simple routines such as level trimming in one direction, in a single long sweep over only half the plucking plain produces excellent leaf. Innovations like creating a seasonal calendar to regulate plucking rounds and paying workers for the area they shear instead of by the kilo keep yields high. Smallholders sharing equipment to save time can then use the many hours of labor saved for field maintenance and to complete agricultural chores like pruning, mulching, and weed abatement to deliver leaf of exceptional quality to factories.

    According to Rainforest Alliance Consultant Harkirat Sidhu, mechanical harvesting is required today because growers cannot complete plucking rounds frequently enough by hand. “We need mechanical harvesting in addition to hand plucking to prevent overgrowth, not to replace hand plucking,” he says. Read more…

    Listen to the review
    Harkirat “Harki” Sidhu on the necessity of mechanical harvesting.

    News

    Sri Lanka tea factory
    Production at Sri Lanka tea factories slowed as stocks of synthetic fertilizer ran low

    Sri Lanka Abandons Fertilizer Import Ban

    By Dan Bolton

    Tea growers convinced the Sri Lankan government to abandon import restrictions on agrochemicals imposed in May after demonstrating a marked decline in quality and yield. Plantations Minister Ramesh Pathirana said the reversal comes in time to help growers responsible for producing $1.3 billion in annual exports.
    At a press conference in Colombo last week, he told reporters imports of chemical fertilizer would continue until the island was able to produce sufficient organic fertilizer for food and cash crops. Two thirds of Sri Lanka’s farmers support organic agriculture according to a survey by Verité Research but 90% currently use agro-chemicals and 85% anticipated the overnight switch to organic fertilizers would lower yields by an average 47%. Read more…

    Farmers Pulse Infographic

    Kenya’s KTDA Sets a Minimum Price for Auctioned Tea

    By Dan Bolton

    The Kenya Tea Development Agency last week announced a minimum reserve price of $2.43 per kilo for tea auctioned in Mombasa.

    The decision is to stabilize persistently low prices during the past two years at the likely expense of export market share. India is a primary beneficiary.

    Azam Monem, director of McLeod Russel India, told reporters “due to Kenyan tea we faced intense competition in worldwide markets. “We are in a better position to increase exports now that our prices are about INRs250 rupees per kilo (approximately $3.35 in US dollars) and Kenyan tea is around INRs200 rupees per kilo (around $2.65 in US dollars), he said.

    KTDA said output declined by 14% to 1.25 billion kilos in the 12 months through June, compared with last year’s record output. Overall, Kenya tea exports increased by 19% to 298 million kilos but auction prices averaged only $1.96 per kilo at Mombasa, which auctions teas from several East African countries.

    KTDA tea prices fell by 8% during the same period, averaging $2.18 per kilo. Kenya’s export earnings during the past seven months fell to $700 million. In 2020 exports totaled $1.2 billion for the year. The Agency expressed concerns about over-reliance on four export markets that generate 70% of sales of commodity grade teas, pledging to produce more orthodox teas that bring a better price.

    Biz Insight – KTDA announced that it is abandoning legal action to prevent enactment of provisions of the 2020 Tea Act. Last winter a group of directors at KTDA factories filed suit to prevent implementation of sections of the act governing special elections. Fifty-five factories at their annual meetings in November will vote on a special resolution to withdraw the cases. The resolution is endorsed by Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya.

    AVPA 4th Teas of the World Contest judges, front row, (left to right) María Kockmann, Carine Baudry, President of Herbal Tea and blends Jury and Lydia Gautier, President of Monovarietal teas Jury. Back row, (left to right) Barbara Dufrene, Jeremy Tamen, and Katrin Rougeventre.

    AVPA Announces Teas of the World Contest Winners

    AVPA’s 4th Annual Teas of the World contest awarded 133 medals this week recognizing teas from 33 countries.

    The online ceremony in Paris awards “gastronomic recognition” in two categories of tea with separate juries evaluating camellia sinensis (monovarietal) and “Herbal teas, blends and scented teas.”

    Prizes included 10 “Gourmet Or” gold medals and 25 silver and 25 bronze with an additional 73 teas receiving an AVPA certificate of distinction. Three golds were awarded in the herbals and blends category and seven gold medals in the camellia sinensis categories.

    Related: A Gastronomic Tea Contest

    Taiwan’s Xue Jian Oolong Tea in Miao Li won two golds (two silvers and four diplomas). The first gold medal was for “Alpine Spring” with another for “Le Thé de Madame Hakka.”

    Wang Family Tea in Beishan, Taiwan earned a gold for its “Wuyi Charcoal Roasted Oolong” and the Tea Key Company in Nantou, Taiwan earned gold for its “Dong Pian Si Ji Chun.”

    Two teas from Darjeeling, India also earned gold medals. “Arya Diamond” distributed by EVS Professionals and Les Jardin de Gaia earned gold for its “Himalayan Secret SFTGFOP1 (Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, Grade 1).”

    A South Korean green tea grown on Jeju Island by Wild Orchard also earned gold.

    In the Herbals and blends categories “Pure Chamomile” by L’Autre Thé grown in Croatia was awarded a gold medal and Les Jardins Gaia won gold for its “Rose de Damas” tea from Iran.

    N. Psyllakis & Co., a family-owned farm in Greece won gold for its “Cretan Mountain Tea” grown in Tofillo, Crete.

    — Dan Bolton

    • Read more… links indicate the article continues. Learn more… links to additional information from reliable outside sources.

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  • Mechanical Tea Harvesting

    Mechanical harvesting gets a bad rap. This is because poorly trained operators using poorly maintained equipment damage bushes, lowering yield and leaf quality. Simple routines such as level trimming in one direction, in a single long sweep over only half the plucking plain produces excellent leaf. Innovations like creating a seasonal calendar to regulate plucking rounds and paying workers for the area they shear instead of by the kilo keep yields high. Smallholders sharing equipment to save time can then use the many hours of labor saved for field maintenance and to complete agricultural chores like pruning, mulching, and weed abatement to deliver leaf of exceptional quality to factories.

    Listen to the interview

    Harkirat “Harki” Sidhu discusses the quality advantage to mechanical harvesting
    Mechanical tea harvester
    Harki Sidhu instructs women equipment operators in Bhumipradha, Indonesia. Photo courtesy Harkirat Sidhu.

    How to Stay on Top of Plucking Rounds

    Harkirat (Harki) Sidhu, 72, Rainforest Alliance India’s Consulting Program Coordinator for Sustainable Landscapes & Livelihoods and owner of Technologies Outsourcing is an expert in mechanical tea harvesters. He makes a compelling argument for improving tea quality using labor hours gained on farms that invest in these time-saving machines.

    Machine Harvested Tea Leaves

    Dan Bolton: Let me begin by just asking why we need harvesters?

    Harkirat Sidhu: In most geographies where we are harvesting tea, we are running out of workers who will work on farms. As a result, what happens is fewer plucking rounds that lead to tea overgrowth, and with overgrowth, you’re not going to make quality tea. So, we need to make sure that we stay on top of the plucking rounds.

    The fear that people have is that if you bring in mechanical harvesting, you’re replacing labor. But that’s not the idea. The idea is to plug the gap. The labor shortage in some places will be 40%. Another place there’ll be 25% fewer workers than required, but whatever the gap is, mechanical harvesting will plug that gap. That’s the whole idea of mechanical harvesting. Without that, we cannot manage today. The more you look at Sri Lanka, at Indonesia, India, China everywhere, everywhere we got the issue of a shortage of skilled labor coming up.

    “Mechanical harvesting is required today because we cannot complete plucking rounds frequently enough by hand. We need mechanical harvesting in addition to hand plucking, not to replace hand plucking.”

    – Harki Sidhu

    Dan: How does harvesting by machine impact the tea bushes and processing?

    Harki: Mechanical harvesters are not the same as hand plucking. So, we need to reorient our processing techniques and re-evaluate the actual processing of tea. Let’s talk for a moment about that. See, the difference between a harvester and hand plucking is that when hand plucking the plucker can selectively leave fresh leaf and other [maintenance] leaves.

    Whenever a harvester is required, we go non-selective at a particular height. The idea is to maintain that height because you will have problems if you go up and down. That’s why we need to make sure that we change the whole way we look at harvesting.

    Because it’s non-selective, we need to ensure that we pluck at the predetermined level and that there is no maintenance foliage coming into the harvest. So, for that, we need to set the table straight. If we don’t adjust these techniques, we will lose crop. You see many videos of people using harvesters, and they keep sweeping over the bush — every time you do that, you’re double cutting. And also it’s very difficult to maintain a level plucking plain. So we don’t recommend that.

    Dan: Could you explain the economics of mechanical harvesters?

    Harki: You don’t need a discussion on it; it is so simple. There are three basic types of harvesting. One is hand plucking which we have been doing for ages. Then shears were introduced, they are like scissors. We call them semi-mechanical harvesters. The third is, of course, the mechanical harvesters which are bigger machines. Some are operated by a single man, and some require two or more operators.

    Now, if you look at the economics, the kilograms plucked per man-day by hand might give you 30 kilograms. Shear harvesting might give you 38 or 39 kilograms, but the mechanical harvester will give you 150-200 kilograms per man-day, depending on the field. So that’s the difference straight away.

    There is a 20% to 23% saving in man-days if you are shear harvesting; there is a 74% to 75% saving in man-days when doing mechanical harvesting.

    What is happening today is that many governments and many organizations realize the need, but a basic subsidy is required for the mechanical harvesters because they are much more expensive.

    • Editor’s Note: A small Kawasaki electric hand harvester sells for around $100, a more capable electric model costs $250-$350; a one-man, gas-powered version sells for $400-$600. A two-man harvester sells for $950-$1,200. A Williames Tea track mounted Selective Tea Plucker sells for $30,000 to $35,000 and the Magic Carpet model sells for $80,000 to $90,000.

    Now, the question comes, can a smallholder afford a mechanical harvester, which costs a lot of money, even if he’s getting a subsidy? The answer is yes.

    What we do is we get two of them to purchase a harvester. Now the requirement for the owner of the harvester might be only a day, and he can cover his area. So, he can then charge the rest of the farmers to do the harvesting for them, and charge them per area, whatever area they’ve got; so, the other farmers don’t need to employ workers, their cost comes down. And the one who’s bought the harvester makes money and recovers his cost. In plantations, the return on investment is seven to eight months, with smallholders it’s a little more.

    That’s why we encourage people to go in for mechanical harvesting. We consider the life of a harvester to be two years. So after two years, they cannibalize a few harvesters to make a new one and buy a new one.

    Smallholders always have an issue with money. As soon as you tell him it costs so much, he says, “Oh my God.” So, then they go in for cheap harvesters, which are half the price, but create double the damage. Your quality goes down, your crop yields go down, the life of the harvester is shorter, so you’re soon buying a new one. So, we encourage them to follow certain principles on maintenance and to buy good equipment, pay for it, and it’ll pay for itself.

    Dan: Quality has often been questioned when the use of mechanical harvesters is involved. Talk to us about why quality does not suffer when one uses a mechanical harvesting strategy.

    Harki: The quality improves. I’ll tell you why. One is you are getting good leaf and you can get a very fine leaf. You decide on the target of your leaf. Most of the time, in hand plucking, by default, the leaf is becoming longer because you can’t harvest on time. So everything is based on the target shoot. You know I might say that in the second flush in Assam, you can do it in ten days, or nine days in October — every place is different. We tell them, you take your target shoot and record the time and date. As it reaches the target again record that time and date and when it reaches again, harvest and keep recording the interval. This becomes your calendar for next year. Once you’ve done it for a year, you got an obvious calendar that lets you plan the plucking schedule. I’m going to be nine days here, ten days here, 12 days at this time, and 13 days round of the season. Right? So it’s so much easier.

    When calculating these plucking intervals, you include in this gap all other agricultural practices that you should be doing during that period. Otherwise, everyone is on harvesting. No other job is being done.

    The harvester buys you all that labor time (75%) so that you can invest all that labor from the savings.

     If you do mechanical harvesting, your quality will suffer by just putting a harvester in place to remove the leaf, which is on top of a bush.

    You must alter many things, as I talked about, unidirectional harvesting, making sure that you’re not taking any maintenance foliage in your harvest, keeping the level not basing pay on kilograms per harvest worker.

    The biggest problem is that growers, once they put the machines in, continue paying that man per kilogram. So, he takes it a little deep, and then the leaf doesn’t come back for another three weeks because he’s done a light skiff, it’s chaos. In three months, the man’s machine goes down broken because he wasn’t taught maintenance. So, adjustment of blades, oiling of blades, If you don’t do that, they overheat and they damage your bush and the stock left behind.

    If you overcome these, which just requires training to understand what these machines can do, you alter your operations based on these machines. It will give you a fantastic quality.

    • Harki has contributed to his Tea Chai blog about tea technology since 2005.
    Single sweep in one direction harvest pattern at Namchic Tea Estate in Arunachal Pradesh. Photo courtesy Harkirat Sidhu.

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  • Tea Biz Podcast | Episode 39

    Tea Biz Podcast Logo

    Listen on your favorite player

    Hear the Headlines

    | Food Inflation and Tea
    | Tea Cargo Woes Worsen
    | COVID’s Impact on the North American Tea Market

    Seven-minute Tea News Recap

    Tea Price Report
    Oct 9 – Sale 40

    India Tea Price Watch

    All India quantities were higher in week 40 with South India experiencing the greater percentage of sales. Prices were lower across all categories with the sharpest decline in South India dust. The unsold quantity of 7,618 metric tons this week is worrying as larger quantities (estimated at more than 17 million kilos) are expected in north India in the next two weeks. Sales volumes were lower in Week 40 at the Siliguri Auction with buyers foregoing bids due to increased lot size. Learn more…

    Dan Bolton

    Features

    This week Tea Biz visits London where Kyle Whittington reviews “Puer Tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic” a meticulously researched cultural biography that reveals the intricacies of Pu’er.

    … and then to Yunnan, China, where ancient tea forests mark the origin of Pu’er, a tea experiencing a popular resurgence due to the pandemic.

    Puer Tea’s improvement with age is said to be its distinguishing feature.

    Review: Puer Tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

    By Kyle Whittington | TeaBookClub

    Sitting on the academic end of the tea bookshelf, this is a fascinating and thoroughly well researched foray into the complex and multi-faceted world of Pu’er tea. An anthropological study which explores the “cultural biography” of Puer tea, the ethnographic and anthropological research that has gone into this is book is exceptional and really opens the intricacies of Pu’er. And yet, despite being such an academic text it is entirely readable and utterly fascinating. Read the review…

    Listen to the review
    Kyle Whittington reviews Puer Tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

    Turning pile fermented Puer tea
    Turning pile fermented Puer tea. Photo credit Zhaoshun Duan, courtesy of Puer Magazine

    The Popularity of Puer

    By Dan Bolton

    The COVID outbreak in China triggered a surge in domestic sales of Pu’er along with teas blended with herbs associated with traditional Chinese medicine. In China tea is viewed as essential to maintain the body’s natural health balance and improve immunity.

    Pu’er does not prevent infection by the novel coronavirus, but this fermented tea aids digestion, concentrates polyphenols, and contains statins that lower cholesterol, which is why it is often prescribed to improve heart health. Pu’er also contains a very diverse makeup of bacteria to support gut health, according to medical research cited in the magazine Well+Good.

    China primarily grows green tea (accounting for 63.5% of production) but dark tea, a category that includes Pu’er, accounts for 13.5% of total production, far more than black (11%) wulong (9.9%) or white tea (1.3%).

    Listen to the report
    Pu’er tea sales steadily increased in both the domestic Chinese market and in export markets.

    News

    Food Inflation
    The US reached an inflation high mark in September

    Food Inflation and Tea

    By Dan Bolton

    As raw materials, energy, and shipping costs rise across a broad swath of food and beverages, including coffee, where prices are up 17% in grocery, packaged tea has avoided a spike. The reason is basic supply and demand. Oversupply of commodity tea is depressing prices while COVID-related expenses drive the price of specialty teas higher. Food inflation is the big unknown. Is this a temporary spike, or are higher prices here to stay? In September, the US Labor Department reported prices increased 5.4%, the most significant jump in prices since January 1991. According to Bloomberg, global food prices are at a decade high, compounded by supply chain disruptions that have sent a United Nations index of food costs up by a third over the past year. Energy costs are rising, and the costs of bringing tea to market are soaring. Read more…

    Tea Cargo Woes Worsen

    By Dan Bolton

    The cost of transporting a 40-foot container of tea from India to Europe or from Vietnam to Los Angeles is now equal to the value of tea it holds.

    Freightos FBX reports shipping charges from East Asia to East Coast ports in North America peaked at $20,695 so far this month. Shippers from Asia to West Coast destinations paid an average $17,377 for a 40-foot TEU Oct. 15. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index is up 464% to an average $4,614 cost per container.

    The price of a container traveling from Kolkata to Rotterdam was $9,500 in October. Add the cost of securing COVID limited labor to load and a premium paid for ground transport, and costs easily approach $20,000.

    Airfreight is the preferred method for transporting specialty tea. In normal times, using a parcel service adds about $6.50 to the cost of each pound of tea, about 40-cents per ounce. But in recent months, rates on some routes have doubled – and doubled again.

    Rates to fly goods from Frankfurt to Hong Kong grew by 2.2 times in the past three months to record high of $3.53 per kilogram, according to the newly launched Freightos Air Index (FAI). Freightos monitors cargo volume for 30 major airlines on its WebCargo platform and tracks cargo prices for 2,000 freight forwarders totaling 40% of global air freight.

    FedEx is raising rates by an average of 5.9%, UPS by 4.9%, and DHL Express announced it would increase its rates by 5.9% on Jan. 1. Retailers who typically offer “free shipping” are upping order minimums to $50 and $75, and many are charging $15 to $25 to ship packets that weigh less than 500 grams (one pound). During the pandemic airlines relied on freight to generate a third of revenue (up from 12% pre-pandemic).

    Biz Insight – Danish logistics data researcher Sea-Intelligence reports that almost 13% of the world’s cargo shipping capacity is tied up by delays. Schedule reliability in August was at a record low of 33.6%, meaning two-thirds of shipped goods are arriving late, according to the company.

    COVID’s Impact on the North American Tea Market

    The initial pandemic-driven surge in tea sales has passed and the North American market has returned to a period of steady growth. The tea market will grow at a projected 3.1% through 2026, according to a report released this week by Research and Markets. Consumer research in the North American Tea Market 2021 report documents the impact of the pandemic and highlights these three trends.

    • Healthy hydration is propelling market growth at the expense of fruit juices and carbonated drinks. The herbal tea segment is expected to experience “significant growth” over the coming years as COVID-19 paved the way for products “that are good for health, natural, and act as an immunity booster.” Organic certification was identified as a desirable product attribute.
    • Second, the increase in settlement of expatriated populations in the US and especially in Canada is driving the North American market, according to the researchers.
    • “The organoleptic versatility associated with tea makes it open to manufacturers to innovate alongside the healthy trends that have been resonating prominently in the North American market,” according to the report. ?

    The US is the third-largest tea importer globally with consumption increasing across the infused beverage category (camellia sinensis + botanicals), according to the report. The major growth opportunities hinge on innovation in flavors and convenience, “and the popularity of high-end specialty tea,” writes Research and Markets.

    — Dan Bolton

    • Read more… links indicate the article continues. Learn more… links to additional information from reliable outside sources.

    Upcoming Events

    October 2021
    Duyun Maojian International Forum for Tea Lovers | Dunyun, Guizhou, China |
    6th Annual Conference for China Tea Import and Export Trade | Oct. 21-22
    The co-located events showcase the production of Maojian green tea. China quarantine and travel restrictions apply. Website | Brochure (PDF)

    Click to view more upcoming events.

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