08 June 2011

DUBAI: Exotic and organic teas are wooing tea drinkers and challenging traditional black teas dominance as never before, tea industry experts say, as a tea factory in Dubai bids to become the worlds largest.

The shift in global tea-drinking trends is felt at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, despite it being more than 2,000 kilometers from the nearest tea bushes in the lush misty mountains of South Asia and East Africa.

Unilevers Jebel Ali tea-blending and packing plant is in the middle of a major tea-consuming market the oil-rich Middle East and records the changing habits of tea drinkers.

The plant, producing 1.1 million tea bags an hour every day all year round, begins expanding later this year aiming to double its output within four years to become the worlds biggest tea factory.

Green tea was relatively unheard of 25 years ago in many Middle Eastern countries, Dubai-based Kurush Bharucha, a Unilever director and world authority on tea, told AFP.

But this has changed rapidly in the past five years. Green tea has got a lot of good press its health properties are well known, added the professional tea taster, buyer and blender.

Women, in particular, are embracing green tea in a big way and really going for it as a refreshing, healthy beverage choice.

Black and green in tea are what red and white are to wine.

The health properties of green tea are also helping the financial health of the whole tea industry.

Nations that export orthodox black tea, such as Sri Lanka, have recently begun a major drive to produce more green tea as well as exotic varieties.

Black tea goes through a process of fermentation, or oxidation, which changes the color of the leaves from green to black. Green tea production stops the fermentation and retains the color of the leaves.

But both varieties come from the same bush.

Decades ago, tea drinkers would opt for either black or green, but now there is a huge choice, and even the humble tea bag is available in an exotic pyramid shape.

Mainstream black and green have been joined by organic, herbal and infusions, single-origin, ready-to-drink and fruit-flavored varieties.

Jasmine, Earl Grey, camomile, lemon and mint are some of the more popular choices. The industry is also seeing a surge in fruit combinations as well as libido-boosting white teas, known as silver tips and golden tips.

Tea has been relatively unaffected by the sharp rise in global commodity prices seen earlier this year, but climate change is beginning to affect tropical crops, including tea.

Prices are more volatile than ever, and the cost per cup has risen steadily for the past five years, said Bharucha, who believes the industry must become more sustainable and go green in the environmental sense.

Sri Lanka, which is competing with Kenya to be the worlds top tea exporter, is already working to developing plants that better resist drought, according to the Tea Research Institute in the island nation.

By 2015, Unilever has committed to source all the tea in its Lipton brand from plantations certified by the U.S.-based Rainforest Alliance, which guarantees the growers green credentials.

Although the cost of tea would rise accordingly, they expect an increase of up to three percent in sales growth, says Cees Talma, Liptons global vice president for brand development.

Tea is very much on the health and wellness trend, and we expect the market to continue to grow between five to seven percent a year, he said.

Our challenge is to continue to grow our black [tea] core while extending into new segments like green, fruit and milk tea.

At Jebel Ali in Dubai, state-of-the-art machines pack tonnes of tea into bags and packets, and plant manager Abdelaziz Salah says they must expand to meet ever-rising demand.

We will start an expansion by the end of this year and by 2015 we want to double our output, he told AFP. We are looking at being the biggest plant in the world.

The Jebel Ali plant may seem an unlikely location for packing the worlds favorite brew, but it is in the middle of a region that has the worlds most avid tea drinkers.

We are quite close to the biggest tea-producing and exporting countries in the world [East Africa, India and Sri Lanka], Bharucha said.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.