What tea professionals need to start the week of June 23, 2014 —
TEAM UP participants in London last week presented a program to raise wages for tea workers… Nestle is withdrawing its Nestea bottled products from China… India tea production fell 24.5% in April…the Fill’er Up unlimited drink app CUPS makes it debut in New York City.
Tea Worker Wages
TEAM UP is an annual gathering of tea professionals hosted by the Ethical Tea Partnership and IDH The Sustainable Trade Initiative in a coalition that includes OXFAM and the German Development Agency GIZ.
Combined these organizations are seeking to remedy the issue of low pay on tea estates in several developing countries.
Many tea producing countries are so poor that legally mandated minimum wages not enough to give tea workers a living wage. While tea estates that pay their workers the legally agreed amount it is not sufficient to covers a household’s basic needs, explains ETP in a release following the event.
Work will focus initially on Malawi, Africa’s second biggest tea producer, where pickers earn two thirds of the World Bank poverty line income of around $2 per person per day. It is a small sum but tea workers are better off than 62% of the population, who exist on less than the World Bank’s extreme poverty line of $1.25 a day.
The coalition aims to help tea estates improve their productivity and profits and make more finance available to invest in improvements in return for a commitment to raise wages. They will also work with employers, unions and governments to agree phased improvements to wages – which are set at national or regional level – and increase worker representation in negotiations. The program will run for several years and inform similar work to raise wages in other countries.
Learn more: Ethical Tea Partnership
Nestea Withdraws from Chinese Market
Nestle first introduced its bottled tea in China in 2002, a program jointly backed by Coca-Cola known as Beverage Partners Worldwide.
Coca-Cola had previously attempted to market Tianyudi tea and a honey tea called Lanfeng. Neither survived.
It was thought the combined marketing efforts of the global beverage giants would make Nestea a success in competition with China’s Master Kong and Taiwan’s Uni-President brands.
According to an article in the Chinese publication Want China Times, Nestea’s market share peaked at 2.3% in 2008 according to Euromonitor International figures dropping to 1.9% in 2010. This led to Nestle and Coca-Cola’s decision to go their separate ways in China in 2012, with the Swiss company taking over the operations of Nestea in the country, while Coca-Cola focused on its Yuan Ye tea brand.
According to the latest report on China’s tea drink market published by Askci Corp, Master Kong and Uni-President now hold a combined market share of over 40%, reports Want China Times.
India Tea Production Falls 25%
Data from the early harvest have been compiled and declines due to the lack of rain were steep as projected.
Production in April declined 24.48% to 56.77 million kg due to lower output in Assam and other regions, according to a report in the Economic Times.
The production stood at 75.17 million kg in April 2013, according to Tea Board data.
Output in Assam, the largest tea-producing state, decreased by 40.34% to 25.33 million kg in April this year from 42.46 million kg a year earlier.
However, in West Bengal, production was up by 21.58% to 13.41 million kg during the month, from 11.03 million kg in April 2013.
The combined production of tea in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka decreased by 18.41% to 16.53 million kg from 20.26 million kg in the year-ago period.
India’s tea production in 2013-14 increased by 6.19% to 1,205.40 million kg from 1,135.07 million kg in 2012-13, according to Tea Board of India.
Source: Economic Times
An Israeli software developer has teamed with 40 independent tea and coffee shops in New York to launch a new subscription phone app good for unlimited drinks for the month.
A $45 subscription covers as many cups as you wish of tea and regular coffee in any size. Upgrade to $85 and users can enjoy unlimited lattes, iced coffee and espresso drinks.
Alternately you can opt for a variable X-cups for $Y dollars fixed price (5 cups $7 for example).
You select your location. Select your drink and present your phone to the cashier. The cashier enters a payment confirmation code.
There is no cost for the shop to join and no point-of-sale integration. It is not a traditional loyalty program, more of a marketing strategy to bring new drinkers into your shop.
Co-founder Gilad Rotem anticipates 200 NY shops will participate as the program advances. Shop owners are paid a discounted rate for every cup purchased by customers using their phone. The fine print requires customers to wait 30 minutes between purchases and prevents them from sharing a login with their friends.
CUPS has been operating in Israel since 2012 after Rotem and four of his high school buddies came up with the idea.
Rotem told the New York Times “People love the notion of unlimited coffee and empowering independent coffee shops.”
The same holds for tea.
Learn more: CUPS (android), CUPS (ios), NYU Local
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