2008 was a good year for Chinese tea exports

China is the world’s first tea producer and third exporter. Exports constitute a significant part of the Chinese tea industry’s revenues. They also offer big opportunities for further development. During the last ten years China’s tea industry has dramatically expanded its international markets to the point that the well-being of the industry heavily relies on those exports.

2008 has confronted the Chinese tea industry with some challenges: Japan and the EU enforced stricter rules for imports; The Pu’er (普洱) bubble burst; and, overshadowing everything, the global financial crisis impacted the tea industry as much as any other industry.

Despite these adverse conditions, the exports of Chinese tea reached new heights in 2008. 297’000 tons of tea were exported. In financial terms this translates into 682 millions of US dollars.

The list of the first four importing countries just shows how internationalized Chinese tea has become: 1. Morocco (50’300 tons), 2. Uzbekistan (23’000 tons), 3. USA (22’200 Tons), 4. Japan (21’000 tons).

Green tea still constitutes the bulk of the exported tea with 223’000 Tons. Quite unsurprisingly Zhejiang (浙江) is the biggest exporting province with 167’’000 tons. Hunan (湖南)’s second place with 30’000 tons is a little bit of a surprise.

Under the influence of a strong Yuan and the global financial crisis, the last two month of the year actually saw a drop of exports of around fifteen percent, preventing the total exports for 2008 to reach the 300’000 tons figure. According to Cai Jun (蔡军), from the China Chamber of Commerce of Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce & Animal By-Products (CFNA), these two last months of 2008 shouldn’t be too worrying and are not an indication of what the results in 2009 will look like. Cai predicts that when their stocks will be empty, foreign merchants will have to start importing tea again, since tea is more a necessity item than a luxury item and people will still be wanting their daily cup. In other words Cai is saying that tea has a relatively small price elasticity, which should prevent its demand from fluctuating too much. He predicts that the numbers for 2009 will be similar to those of 2008. This is maybe a bold assertion; but it is not an absurd one. There are reasons to believe that tea might do well in a bad economy.

Chinese sources: 2008年我国茶叶出口再创历史新高; 中国茶叶出口去年再创新高 出口创汇6.82亿美元