Chinese tea exports are still growing

All things considered, 2009 was again a good year for Chinese tea exports. The 3 hundred thousand tons threshold was surpassed for the first time and the profits made have also reached a new height (7.05 hundred million US dollars).

This was achieved in a period of international financial instability and insecurity. However, as we predicted, tea consumption doesn’t necessary fall during hard times.

On the “geopolitical” side of Chinese tea exports, things haven’t changed much since last year. Nine countries receive 60% of the exported tea . In order of amount of imported tea in 2010: Morocco, Uzbekistan, Russia, USA, Japan, Pakistan, Algeria, Benin and Mauritania. Green tea still is the most exported tea type and constitutes more than half of all exported tea.

On the less positive side, remains the fact, that most of the tea exported out of China is not premium tea. In other words, generic green tea, rather than Maofeng (毛峰), Longjing (龙井), etc. The added value of this kind of generic tea is rather small and thus the profits of the tea producers much smaller than with sophisticated high-end products.

Chinese source: 中国茶叶年出口突破30万吨 摩洛哥为第一大市场