• Tea Biz Podcast | Episode 19

    Tea Biz Podcast Logo

    Hear the Headlines

    | Tea History Collection Unveiled
    | Indian Commodities Logjam
    | THIRST Undertakes a Tea Human Rights Analysis
    | A Series of Major Quakes Rattle Yunnan

    Seven-minute News Recap

    India Tea Price Watch | Sale 19

    Features

    Tea Biz this week travels to Nepal to meet Aasha Bhandari the newly named International Trade and Promotion Executive at the Himalayan Tea Producers Cooperative

    …and to the North Carolina campus of Wake Forest University to learn from student William Liu why ancient teas and rituals retain their appeal with young people.

    Nepal Tea Garden
    Nepal is expanding the country’s tea growing regions to produce more specialty loose leaf tea.

    Himalaya Tea Opportunity

    Nepal Increases Production of Quality Specialty Teas

    By Aravinda Anantharaman | Bengaluru

    Nepal’s tea industry reported record sales in 2020. The fabled tea land is growing greater quantities and greater varieties of loose and broken leaf teas thanks to a government-initiated expansion of the industry to high altitude gardens in non-traditional growing areas. Rural agrarian entrepreneurs are redefining offerings for an international market thirsty for the distinct taste of Himalayan grown oolongs, white teas, and premium black whole leaf. In this segment Aasha Bhandari, newly named to promote trade at the Himalayan Tea Producers Cooperative, discusses her plans for HIMCOOP.

    Read more…

    Aasha Bhandari discusses Nepal’s tea industry in transition.
    William Liu
    College sophomore William Liu founded the World Tea Association and To Tea Together podcast.

    Why Ancient Tea Appeals to Young People

    By Dan Bolton

    William Liu is a 20-year-old sophomore at Wake Forest University so inspired by tea that he and his classmates established the World Tea Association on campus and online. The group offers tea discovery and tasting sessions weekly and hosts occasional tea panels with presentations by tea professionals, tea scholars, and tea explorers. The events bring together many who are new to tea, says William “we aim to redefine the tea experience through an interdisciplinary approach and expose the true leaf to a greater audience.”

    In this discussion he describes why tea appeals to young people and explains his view that tea learning is ongoing. “The tea journey has no destination, he says, it involves only intention and lifelong learning.”

    Read more…

    William Liu on advancing our knowledge of the leaf.

    Tea News you Need to Know

    By Dan Bolton

    An extensive private collection of historical tea artifacts and modern facilities for meetings and tea research were unveiled on International Tea Day by Tea Ambassador Mike Bunston, OBE.

    The Tea History Collection, located in Banbury, Oxfordshire in the DCS Group complex, is the inspired work of entrepreneur Denys Shortt, OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). The facility, valued at £100,000 ($140,000) is open by appointment to tea-related organizations and academia. It is equipped with a tasting bar, high-speed internet, archive cabinets, a video-conference room and work areas.

    Shortt, who founded DCS in 1994, grew up on a tea estate in Assam. His family worked at gardens there for 20 years before moving to Africa where his father managed the Ikumbi Tea Factory in Thika, Kenya.

    “We do not believe there is anything like this in the world,” says Shortt. “We have items from Plantation House (now demolished) which was where the London Tea Auctions were held.” The collection of more than 500 items includes teas, books,  and sample cabinet with 200 tins containing teas dating to 1904. The collection will be maintained as a non-profit.

    Learn more….

    Commodities Logjam

    Fifty thousand in West Bengal are homeless this week due to a tropical cyclone that halted air traffic and port activity in Calcutta. Every link of India’s tea supply chain is under stress. Restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19 are once again limiting the number of harvest workers in the gardens and reducing by half staffing at factories processing tea, while simultaneously forcing the cancellation of tea auctions… delaying transport and causing local warehouses to overflow.

    Truckers essential to transporting tea were virtually halted last year and while many delivering to cities face delays due to curfews that prevent unloading at night, local transport is much less problematic in 2021.

    The weak link in the commodities supply chain during the second wave are buyers who cannot easily judge what quantities are required for manufacturers and to meet varying retail demand. For example, Kochi-based spices trader Kishor Shamji told the Hindu Businessline that a lack of buying interest from masala manufacturers in upcountry markets has affected the sales of almost all spices, including pepper, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Meanwhile, traders worry that the tea they purchase to send overseas will experience costly shipping fees and delays. Last year’s first wave dealt urban areas the hardest blow but in 2021 it is rural areas that suffer.

    Biz Insight – In India, as in many countries, mandatory lockdowns and health concerns have accelerated sales of tea. A survey of 22,000 rural small market stores known collectively as Kirana revealed a 140% increase in tea sales. Sales of hand sanitizers that appeared near the top of the list last year are flat but sales of soap increased by 50%, according to StoreKing. Pest and mosquito repellent experienced a 200% increase and comfort snacks and biscuits are up 83%.

    Assessing Human Rights in Tea

    THIRST The International Round Table for Sustainable Tea, is launching a three-year program to analyze the root causes of human rights breaches in the tea industry and come up with an action plan for how to solve them.

    Founder Sabita Banerji objects to “rights assessments” which have a negative connotation she favors an “impact analysis.” Banerji calls it a ‘constructive solution-oriented approach’.

    The program will document conditions for workers and farmers and identify problems “but more importantly, what can be done to address these problems,” said Banerji. The first step is to consolidate existing research and then conduct in-depth studies where there are gaps, providing a global picture of the interdependencies of tea.

    Read more on the Tea Biz blog.

    A Series of Major Quakes Rattle Yunnan

    Three major earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks damaged 14,000 structures, killed three people and seriously injured 28 in Yunnan Province last week. The first in the series struck Dali located near the heart of the tea growing region. That deadly 6.0 magnitude quake on Tuesday was followed Friday by a much stronger 6.4 quake that damaged homes and forced rescuers to pull several people from under debris. Five hours later a 7.4 temblor located in adjacent Yangbi [YANg BY] rattled Yunnan again.

    The steep mountainous region, subject to landslides, is jittery about quakes. In 2008 a 7.9 earthquake centered in Sichuan province killed 87,000 people and left 4.2 million homeless, causing $150 billion in damage.

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  • Assessing Human Rights in Tea

    THIRST The International Round Table for Sustainable Tea, is launching a three-year program to analyze the root causes of human rights breaches in the tea industry and come up with an action plan for how to solve them. This will take the form of a Human Rights Impact Assessment of the global tea sector.

    Tea workers
    Tea workers experience a range of working conditions from ideal to difficult to inhumane.

    A Solution-Oriented Approach

    By Aravinda Anantharaman

    A Human Rights Impact Assessment is defined by the Danish Institute for Human Rights as “a process for identifying, understanding, assessing and addressing the adverse effects of a business project or business activities on the human rights enjoyment of impacted rightsholders such as workers and community members.” The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights recommend that businesses inform themselves about human rights in their own operations and in their supply chains.

    THIRST founder Sabita Banerji, who also consults with organizations like Oxfam and Living Wage Foundation, writes that “The term ‘Human Rights Impact Assessment’ makes people think of the negatives of what’s happening in human rights, in the supply chain. I prefer to think of it as a human rights impact analysis.”

    The program sets out to look at the conditions for workers and farmers, the cause of problems, and what can be done to address the problems. Banerji calls it a ‘constructive solution-oriented approach’ which has four focus areas:

    • Create an evidence base across tea-growing regions by consolidating available research and identifying under-documented regions.
    • Conduct in-depth studies where there are gaps and provide a global picture of the interdependencies of tea.
    • Interrogate the tea value chain from producer to consumer, and the context within which it operates, to understand what levers and dynamics within the tea trading system might be driving human rights breaches.
    • Convene roundtable meetings of stakeholders in the tea sector to use that evidence to decide what changes are needed and act on them.
    Sabita Banerji
    Sabita Banerji

    “A drought in Kenya will send prices up in India and vice versa. So how can we look at the whole value chain from the producer to the consumer and everyone in between – the traders, the packers, the branders and the retailers, the auction house. How can we look at how trading is done to understand are the dynamics within that value chain and the distribution of value along the chain to see if these are driving some of these breaches of human rights?”

    The program will look into:

    1. The context within which the tea industry functions: the legislative framework, the international standards, the ILO conventions that different countries have signed up for, new laws like the one that will soon be passed by the EU making it compulsory for companies to do human rights due diligence studies in their supply chains, in addition to consumer trends and the role they are playing in drawing ethics and human rights into the conversation on consumption.
    2. Initiatives, programs, and business models, and how they have worked. THIRST will study both experimental and traditional models to see what can be borrowed, replicated, adapted, and scaled to bring systemic change to the industry.
    3. Ways to bring civil society and the industry to look at human rights challenges together, find solutions together, and then work together to put those solutions into practice.

    Central to the program is the dialogue with producers. Adds Banerji, “I think the pattern so far has been for people who are concerned about human rights, raising these issues as they see them but framing it in quite a hostile way. That puts the producers on defensive mode. And I think in any case, the tea industry’s tea estate model was always set up in a very kind of a defensive way. There isn’t a tradition and a culture of listening really. I believe, and I hope, that this study will be able to look into this more and see if it’s true that the producers are themselves trapped in a system, which makes it difficult for them to respect human rights, actually. I’ve often found, in the other Human Rights Impact Assessments that I’ve done, that very often that the problem is that the farmers are not getting sufficient price for their produce to, to be able to fulfil the human rights requirements of their workers or the small farmers supplying them. I suspect the same will be true in the tea sector.”

    The program is ambitious and not without challenges. As Banerji points out, in the past, when activists, academics, or trade unions have pointed to the problems, producers have been defensive. There is a reluctance to engage in dialogue as much of it begins with criticism of their functioning. THIRST’s challenge will be in achieving the balance between earning the trust of companies and balancing that with grassroots activists. “There is a lot of mistrust on both sides. So it’s going to be tricky getting them to a point where they feel they can at least have a conversation with each other and hear each other’s side of the story and point of view to try to find a way to move forward,” she says.

    The program follows a tried and tested model, which begins with:

    Assessment (year 1) : A desk review of available literature to get an understanding of the structure of the industry and the dynamics of its working.
    Analysis (year 2) : Interview people in the industry, including workers, farmers, trade unionists, civil society, campaigners, company managers and owners to understand their perspectives.
    Action (year 3) : As an independently funded human rights assessment, the program will put out a set of recommendations and convene working groups with the industry and civil society to enable these recommendations into action.

    Says Banerji, “While some recommendations will be specific to specific geographies and may result in a working group for that particular country or region, there will be other recommendations that apply globally. And that’s why this is a Human Rights Impact Assessment of the global tea sector. Because all the elements are so interdependent. I think part of the problem up to now is that the issues have been looked at in some narrow geographical way whereas I believe that the root causes of those problems are systemic. They are industry-wide.”

    The program begins in July 2021, and an Advisory Committee will be formed with a representative range of stakeholders from tea-producing countries and tea buying companies.

    THIRST invites civil society, academics, funders, companies and other tea stakeholders to be part of this study, in the following ways:

    1. Become a civil society partner in the study, helping to steer, shape and deliver it with THIRST and other partners 

    2. Contribute research reports and data, conduct new field research in under-studied areas and/or contribute analysis of the global tea market and trading system, take part in roundtable meetings to discuss findings and resulting actions 

    3.Volunteer to share corporate views and information to ensure that the study is well balanced and presents all views fairly and accurately

    4. Become a funder to enable the study to be as deep and far-reaching as possible 

    Contact THIRST via our website: https://thirst.international/contact/ to find out more.

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  • Why Ancient Tea Appeals to Young People

    William Liu is a 20-year-old sophomore at Wake Forest University so inspired by tea that he and his classmates established the World Tea Association on campus and online. The group offers tea discovery and tasting sessions weekly and hosts occasional tea panels with presentations by tea professionals, tea scholars, and tea explorers. The events bring together many who are new to tea, says William, “we aim to redefine the tea experience through an interdisciplinary approach and expose the true leaf to a greater audience.” In this segment he describes why tea appeals to young people and explains his view that tea learning is ongoing. “The tea journey has no destination,” he says, “it involves only intention and lifelong learning.”

    William Liu, a student at Wake Forest University, discusses why tea appeals to young people.
    A joint meeting of the Anthro Club and World Tea Association at Wake Forest University.

    Tea Awakening

    Traveling with his mother to China awakened in William Liu a strong interest in gong fu style preparation of single-origin teas. When the 20-year-old sophomore returned to the Wake Forest University campus he discovered others were also eager to explore tea. Crawford Wheeler, who grew up in London, and Roxie Ray, who grew up in a Persian household, joined him in establishing the World Tea Association, a group that hosts weekly tastings and occasional panel discussions. William hosts a podcast on behalf of the association and continues his education in tea.

    Dan Bolton: Thanks for joining us on the podcast William. Tell us the story about how you first discovered fine tea.

    William: My family on my mom’s side is from Yunnan but my mom only started drinking tea in recent years. I only started drinking tea a year ago. The inspiration was a trip back to China where I was first exposed to gongfu tea. My mom brought me to various tea shops in Chengdu and Yunnan, and it was for me personally a way to connect with my cultural roots. Growing up in Canada as a Chinese Canadian, that wasn’t something that I was really aware of and so I found a greater appreciation and I realized that tea is so much more than a drink. 

    I realized that this type of brewing and single-origin tea isn’t common at all in the West, at least not now.  I really wanted to share with my fellows on campus and that’s what led to the creation of The World Tea Association.

    Dan: What is it about tea that appeals to young people?

    William: A few things really capture the attention of young people, it’s new, it’s very new for a lot of young people and also the nature of tea is that it’s very healthy and the trend with our current generation right now is that we are becoming much more aware of what we are putting into our body. In other words, we’re becoming a lot more health-conscious and we’re seeking mindful practices. Brewing tea is one of those things that provides an experience that teabags are not able to do. Quality tea allows you to really sit down and reflect on life and become more mindful with the tea.

    Our society right now is growing a lot more diverse and globalized. People are seeking different cultures and people are seeking new ways to do things that might be different from what they’re accustomed to and also with COVID, especially with COVID, I’ve seen a lot more young people get into tea because with COVID everyone has been forced to reflect and isolate and pretty much contemplate our life. Tea is the perfect activity to practice mindfulness and to become much more aware of ourselves. 

    Dan: Are they also drinking herbals and tisanes?

    William: A lot of my friends consume a lot more of the tisanes and herbal tea mainly to help them to calm down. I also noticed a lot also drink, for example, chamomile to help sleep at night to get in the mood to level down. These teas usually are a lot more floral, so people like the scent, people like the sweetness of it, and that’s what attracts them.

    Dan: Talk to me about the appeal of bubble tea.

    William: We don’t have a lot of bubble tea shops. I do notice that bubble tea is already really big and a lot of people do gravitate towards bubble tea because it’s accessible, it’s convenient and it’s also very sweet, and so that’s one of the things that probably attracts a lot of people. It’s also a way for them to bond and to connect together similarly to how we have gone through tea as a way to socialize and to, you know, discuss what’s going on in our lives. Tea has that same purpose with a lot of people our age. 

    Dan: What can tea professionals do to bring more young people into the tea community?

    William: I think the best way for tea professionals to bring more young people into the community is essentially just through exposure, reaching out to universities in your local cities and establishing collaborations with various groups and student organizations.

    What I see right now is that a lot of people have not been exposed to it, but once they do become exposed to tea, it’s something that a lot of people become interested in. So I would say tea professionals reach out to the young people that they know, find something to connect. For example I noticed that some local tea shops would host weekly nights playing chess and serving tea. People can come in and they will sit down and while they’re playing chess they would be exposed to the environment in the shop. The tea that they consume will be the tea from the tea shop. 

    The World Tea Association is committed to building community, promoting health and life long learning.

    Bringing People Together Through Tea

    The culture of tea today is present but faint and wrongly perceived. The World Tea Association redefines the tea experience through an interdisciplinary approach to expose the true leaf to a greater audience and community.

    We believe that strong bonds are formed through intentional activities done together such as having tea. Conversations around tea are always insightful and introspective. We hope to create a community where tea is just as much the center as it is not.

    Promoting the health benefits of tea is a core principle. Tea is more than a dose of caffeine. The physical and mental health benefits of consuming tea will always be felt.

    Our vision extends beyond just drinking and sharing. To create a successful community with tea, the learning aspect must be continual and mutual. Advancing our knowledge of the leaf and keeping an open mind is important as it cultivates the quality of humility. Nobody at the World Tea Association knows everything about tea nor does anyone claim they are a “Tea Master.”

    The tea journey has no destination, it involves only intention and lifelong learning.

    William Liu, Founder and President
    Crawford Wheeler, Vice President & Director of Coordination
    Roxie Ray, Director of Marketing & Public Relations
    Tyler Pruitt, Faculty Advisor & Treasurer

    ? World Tea Association

    To Tea Together Logo

    The TO TEA TOGETHER podcast celebrates and promotes artisanal tea culture by engaging in conversations that bring diverse minds together and bridge cross-cultural gaps over a pot of quality tea. TO TEA TOGETHER shares insightful conversations from the next generation of leaders, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars while cultivating a new era for the appreciation of artisanal tea culture.

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  • Q|A Aasha Bhandari

    Episode 19

    Nepal’s tea industry reported record sales in 2020. The fabled tea land is growing greater quantities and greater varieties of loose and broken leaf teas thanks to a government-initiated expansion of the industry to high altitude gardens in non-traditional growing areas. Rural agrarian entrepreneurs are redefining offerings for an international market thirsty for the distinct taste of Himalayan grown oolongs, white teas, and premium black whole leaf. In this segment Aravinda Anantharaman introduces Aasha Bhandari, newly named to promote trade at the Himalayan Tea Producers Cooperative, a consortium of all orthodox tea producers established in 2003.

    Aasha Bhandari on the opportunities for Himalayan Tea from Nepal.
    Nepal is expanding tea production into high-altitude regions of the country to produce more Orthodox tea.
    Nepal is expanding tea production into high-altitude regions of the country to produce more Orthodox tea. Photo courtesy HIMCOOP/Aasha Bhandari

    Himalaya Tea Opportunity

    Aasha Bhandari is the International Trade and Promotion Executive at HIMCOOP, in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has taken over from John Taylor who resigned as Marketing Manager. Aasha was with the International Trade Centre working on a sustainable map project when she was invited to take over this role at HIMCOOP. In this segment she talks to us about her plans for HIMCOOP and what she sees as strengths, challenges and opportunities for Nepal’s tea industry.

    Aravinda Anantharaman: You’ve recently taken charge of trade and marketing for HIMCOOP.  What will you be working on in promoting Nepal’s tea industry?

    Aasha Bhandari: We have good quality tea, but we need to focus more on marketing, pricing, and our strategy to promote it in the international market. Nepal has mostly SMEs, farmer-based production and strong factories. We may not be strong in terms of capacity or production but are strong in terms of the quality of tea that we make.

    Related: Nepal Orthodox Tea Gets its Own Trademark

    Aasha: Tea a growing industry and people are more focused on Orthodox tea rather than CTC. Even in Orthodox, there are varieties of tea – Nepal makes oolong, black tea and white tea. I’m seeing many young tea planters who are involved in the industry or who have started in the tea industry.

    They are more focused on putting creativity in tea. One of the factories, a young factory, they are playing with the taste of tea and the processing of tea and that has actually produced a good output. I can see a lot of young people getting involved in focussing on quality.

    Aravinda: What do you see as challenges and opportunities?

    Aasha: I am excited about adding more SMEs. We have 20 to 26 producers at HIMCOOP, but I want to include more SMEs and go to the farmers on their field and convince them that they have potential marketing outside the country and in exports. For example, we have good teas, but the farmers are unaware about the pricing, about the packaging or invoicing even about the Exim Code (required registration for firms importing or exporting goods from Nepal). I am excited to give that information to them and teach them, or at least help them to think about export in near future. My first priority is to give SMEs the same platform that we are giving to our other producers.

    I do feel the pressure that’s on my shoulder to sell the teas. To do better than last year when we had the biggest sale. This year, there is a little difficulty getting the samples to Kathmandu and sending it outside the country. DHL is expensive. Flights are also cancelled. When I started, I felt a little bit worried about not being able to match up the sales of last year or the work we were able to do last year.

    I also feel that being very young, I may have to prove myself and that I can deliver.

    Aravinda: How has it been so far?

    Aasha Bhandari, HIMCOOP Promotions
    Aasha Bhandari cupping

    Aasha: I am in touch with our producers and they are doing well. There are difficulties but they are managing. During the first flush, there were hail stones in some places and a few of our producers were sharing that the hail destroyed their tea bushes, especially the buds. But overall, it’s been good so far. I am hopeful about a good second flush. I’m looking forward the white tea actually, because that has good price and good market value. We have specific buyers, small buyers for white tea, and they’ve been inquiring about the white tea. Producers were not able to make white tea in the first flush because of too much rain.

    Aravinda: What is the framework of the Nepal tea industry?

    Aasha: We are small in geography; we have small gardens and a small production. But if I have to describe the model, how it has been operated, it’s fully based on a small cooperatives, SME models where a few groups of farmers run the factory. The farmers don’t own the factory, the factory is owned by the cooperative of the farmer groups.

    At HIMCOOP, member producers have their own factories and some own their own garden also. A few, 10-20% of the factories, depend on the farmers. Since last three, four years, small factories are also being built by farmers themselves.

    Aravinda: How does HIMCOOP play a role in the larger Nepal industry?

    Aasha: HIMCOOP was officially started in 2003 as a consortium of orthodox tea producers. It was basically established as a joint market marketing platform for the producers. It was established to promote Nepali Orthodox tea in the international market. It works on a cooperative model. We work on samples. Producers send us samples. I taste the tea, characterize its quality and taste, place a price over that and forward to buyer. So that’s how it’s been done. Members send us sample every season, we find buyers and forward the sample to the buyers.

    Related: Nepal Announces Tea Traceability Project

    HIMCOOP has played a very crucial role to promote the Nepal tea industry because we have a lot of buyers through this platform. Even last year, with the COVID situation, we, as an organization, did not stop. In fact, last year saw the highest sales for HIMCOOP in its entire 18-20 years existence.

    Aravinda: What are the factors that have helped create the brand identity of Nepal’s tea?

    Aasha: I think it’s the location and the weather, the bushes are planted at an altitude of around 7,500 feet.

    Second is the innovation. At HIMCOOP, we have different types of factories. Some focus on quality in volumes while there are a few small factories where they love to play with the tea making. I think, including all other factors, it’s the innovation and the creativity. There are a few factories that have been doing really well. Others are focusing on making good quality tea, not taking risks on the creativity and innovation. But there are different markets for all these teas.

    Aravinda: Is HIMCOOP primarily looking at exports or also at the domestic market?

    Aasha: On that point, actually last year we were in dilemma with the lockdown and how long it would last. It was end of March, the starting point of first flush when we faced a lockdown. I asked the producers about the local market and plans to market to them. But luckily, the COVID situation was not that problematic last year and we were able to sell all the teas. I bring up this topic quite frequently. Nepal has a limited domestic market. But it’s mainly CTC that is consumed by people. There are people who love trying different types of tea. I think we’ve not marketed… we lack marketing in domestic markets.

    I’m not saying we should not export but I think we should also be able to hold the domestic market. I was quite surprised to know that a few of, most of our producers have never thought about the local market. The reason is often cost. They sayit’s not cost effective for them because here people would purchase on less price. I don’t agree because I have been to tourist places like Thamel where they are selling White Tea, SF, Oolong, and silver needle tea at double the price they are exporting. Of course the quantity matters. Domestic market might not be able to consume that much of tea, at the moment, but I think we should offer a percent to domestic market.

    Many factories would gift us tea. It was a lot of tea for me alone and I would give it to my friends. They didn’t know that Nepal is producing such good teas. And they’ve been asking me where, which factory. I told them that it’s not for sale and that they have to contact the factory individually if they want to buy it. So there is a gap between the producers and the consumers here in Nepal. From my own personal experience, a lot of people that I’ve given tea as a gift, they want to buy that tea again. There are a few tea shops but either they quote a high price, or it’s tea from Darjeeling, Assam, Sri Lanka. I think we need to focus on the domestic market also.

    Aravinda: Would you say, Nepal tea as a brand has been established?

    Aasha: I would say it’s in the process. We have a long way to go. I think for now, for the factories that we are selling, for the buyers that come to us, it has already been established, not for the whole market. Buyers do recognize Nepal as being very good. They do expect that if it’s from Nepal, it will be good. I want to take HIMCOOP, establish it as a marketing brand in the future.

    Tea withering facility, 2020 was a record year for sales
    Tea withering facility, 2020 was a record year for sales. Photo courtesy HIMCOOP/Aasha Bhandari

    HIMCOOP (Himalayan Tea Producers Cooperative)

    HIMCOOP is a joint marketing consortium of all Orthodox tea producers of Nepal. It was established in 2003 out of the need to link producers of high quality teas to buyers in the international arena. The intent is to jointly market tea by all producers on a common platform, through a one window sale outlet.

    HIMCOOP forwards samples right through out the season to buyers all over the world and also provides any information required on Nepal tea and the Nepal tea industry. HIMCOOP represents estates that offer a variety of white, green, oolong, hand rolled and black whole and broken leaf tea.

    HIMCOOP has respect for nature, people, social responsibility, and a commitment to maintain high standards in encompassing all aspects of cultivation and production of quality tea from Nepal.

    Contact HIMCOOP

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    • Share this post with your colleagues. | Episode 19 | Nepal has good quality tea, but we need to focus more on marketing, pricing, and our strategy to promote “Nepal Tea Quality from the Himalaya” in the international market.

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  • Tea Biz Podcast | Episode 18

    Caption: Tea Forest in the Hawaiian sun near the village of Volcano. Courtesy Tea Hawaii/Eva Lee

    Tea Biz Podcast Logo

    Hear the Headlines

    | International Tea Day Celebrations
    | Assam Forbids Tea Workers to Isolate at Home
    | Nepal’s First Flush is Delayed
    | Kagoshima May Soon Outproduce Shizuoka

    Seven-minute News Recap

    India Tea Price Watch | Sale 19

    Features

    Tea Biz this week travels to the slopes of the Kilauea Volcano where Tea Hawaii Founder Eva Lee describes the ongoing tea harvest as unusually wet and seven weeks later than normal.

    …and then to Massachusetts to learn from author and historian Chitrita Banerji how a simple beverage transformed Indian culture.

    Tea Hawaii owners Eva Lee and Chiu Leong

    Uniquely Hawaiian

    Constant rains delayed Hawaii’s first flush by several weeks

    By Dan Bolton

    Eva Lee is a pioneer of modern tea cultivation in Hawaii, establishing with her husband, Chiu Leong, a tea garden and nursery in the village of Volcano 20 years ago. The farm supplied growers with hearty cultivars first introduced in 2000 by researchers at the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Hawaiian tea is grown on farms producing less than 100 kilos a year. Small amounts of premium tea are exported, but most is purchased by local restaurants and tourists. In this conversation, Lee describes how the “modest but very strong tea industry” adapted during a difficult year. Read more…

    Tea Hawaii co-founder Eva Lee shares details about the 2021 harvest.
    Chitrita Banerji

    Tea is Both Cultural and Personal

    By Aravinda Anantharaman | Bengaluru

    Humans readily adapt to new foods and drink, most with little affect “we make them our own by accepting them and enjoying them” says distinguished food and culture author Chitrita Banerji. But some are transformative: “It’s interesting that a foreign drink brought in by a foreign colonial power became such an important thing. We don’t think of tea as a foreign drink anymore,” she tells Aravinda Anantharaman during this International Tea Day interview.

    Read more…

    Chitrita Banerji on the transformative

    Tea News you Need to Know

    By Dan Bolton

    Villagers have celebrated tea at local festivals that date to millennia. In the past hundred years, regional and national tea celebrations gained momentum — driven primarily by corporate marketers.

    A decade ago, the idea of a global day of recognition with a different message took hold. Joydeep Phukan, who directs the Tocklai Tea Research Institute in Assam, was tasked by the FAO’s Intergovernmental Group on Tea to convince the United Nations General Assembly to focus on producers, creating awareness and appreciation for the small growers responsible for most of the world’s tea. That took five years.

    Then the real work began. In 2019 when he learned of the General Assembly vote in favor of International Tea Day, Phukan challenged the industry: “Now that we have a dedicated day for tea, we need to do interesting things around the day to re-position tea as the most preferred beverage in the world.”

    Today you see that commitment passionately on display. There are virtual festivals, seminars, and academic presentations, an all-day SofaSummit to hear the voices of origin and the YouTube series “Around the World in 80 Teas” a marvelous virtual visit to the tea lands narrated by Will Battle and Dr. Sharon Hall, who directs the UK Tea & Infusions Association. The UN organized a presentation on sustainability and panel discussion. In Argentina, the Misiones tea growers are presenting a Spanish-language tea conference. In Sri Lanka the focus is marketing. In China the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs is hosting the Hangzhou International Tea Industry Expo, the largest face-to-face tea expo in China since the pandemic.  If you love tea please promote and participate in these activities, either live or over the weekend since most are recorded.

    Today is a glorious day, let’s all share in the tea industry’s ten-year overnight success.

    Biz Insight – Tea Biz presents Behind the Headlines, a 15-minute YouTube presentation by Dan Bolton describing trends that shape today’s news. Available in English and Spanish.

    Assam Forbids Tea Workers to Isolate at Home

    The situation has worsened in Assam to the point that workers who test COVID positive, many of whom are mothers and grandmothers, must quarantine outside their home until they recover. The practice is controversial but necessitated by the fact entire families have perished on the return of infected workers.

    Assam Health Minister Keshab Mahanta announced that

    “In the tea gardens, we have taken a tough stance on isolation of the positive patients. No one will be allowed to avail home isolation in the tea gardens.”

    Workers that do not require hospitalization must remain in COVID Care Centers where they are provided food and medicine. The vaccination rate remains low in part because many are unable to navigate the Co-WIN online registration system. Registration is mandatory for all those 18 years of age and older.

    During the past year Assam counted fewer than 1000 deaths but there were more than 500 cases in Dibrugarh this week. There were more than 6000 cases reported May 19 and the seven day average is more than 5000. Deaths are approaching 2,500.

    India recorded the highest COVID one day fatalities of any country this week. There are now 26 million active cases with almost 300,000 deaths officially recorded, a tally that is likely an undercount.

    Biz Insight – There were 1,851 tea workers who tested positive on 229 tea gardens of Assam last week. There are now 214 COVID Care Centres in operating with more opening this week. There are 850 registered gardens in the state, any that are found to have 20 or more workers test positive are declared a containment zone.

    Nepal First Flush Delayed

    Tea growers in Nepal faced a formidable combination of wet weather, expensive fertilizer, high transport costs, a shortage of labor, infestations of leaf curl and black tip that led to declines of as much as 40% last year compared to 2019.

    In 2021 drought is the big concern.

    Harvest totals or the first flush are half that of 2020. New leaves did not sprout on schedule due to drought conditions that lasted from December until February. The Kathmandu Post writes that unlike last year, the price of CTC (cut, tear, curl) teas are 200 Nepal Rupees per kilo, well below highs of 360 Nepal rupees last year.

    Nepal is also seeing a replay of last year’s Covid-19 crisis. Nepal reported 9,198 new confirmed cases on Monday around 3000% increase from last month. The positivity rate is averaging 45% with 174 deaths per day in a country of around 30 million population.

    Biz Insight – Nepal Tea founder Nishchal Banskota, who manages the family’s Nepal tea garden remotely from New York, writes that “along with the health crisis, the small farmers in the agricultural sector face even longer term impact due to their crops getting wasted due to the lockdowns and lack of market access. The farmers that were just hoping to recoup the losses from last year’s crisis are yet again faced with challenges to produce and sell their crops. The tea farmers find themselves in the same situation where they might not be able to harvest their most productive second flush due to the rise in the cases.” 

    Learn more on the Tea Biz Blog.

    Kagoshima May Soon Outproduce Shizuoka

    Shizuoka, Japan’s picturesque and most productive tea prefecture since 1959, may soon have to relinquish that title to Kagoshima, according to data released by Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Acreage under tea and green leaf output has slowly declined since the 1980s in Shizuoka which produced 25,200 metric tons of unprocessed tea leaves in 2019. The total is 34% of Japan’s tea production. The 2019 crop was valued at ¥ 25.1 billion yen (about $230 million US dollars). Kagoshima growers, who harvested only 2,700 metric tons in 1959, by 2019 were recording ¥ 25.2 billion in sales. The prefecture harvested nearly the same amount of tea on 7,970 hectares, compared to Shizuoka’s 13,700 hectares. The reason is that Kagoshima invested heavily in mechanized harvesting equipment now used on 97.5% of the prefecture’s farms. Due to steeper slopes and smaller plots, only 65.8% of Shizuoka’s tea is mechanically harvested.

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