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HomeFoodDubai looks to bag top spot as tea goes green

Dubai looks to bag top spot as tea goes green

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EXOTIC and organic teas are wooing tea drinkers and challenging traditional black tea’s dominance as never before, tea industry experts say, as a tea factory in Dubai bids to become the world’s largest.

The shift in global tea-drinking trends is felt at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, where Unilever’s Jebel Ali tea-blending and packing plant is located.

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 world’s 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, said.

“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.

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 in recent years begun a major drive to produce more green tea as well as exotic varieties.

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 world’s 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 US-based Rainforest Alliance, which guarantees the grower’s green credentials.

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

He said the global tea market is expected to rise up to seven per cent annually, and as consumers become more environmentally aware, those who joined the green bandwagon early will benefit more.

“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.

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