The 2025 Global Tea Report

This year’s annual tea report finds that the global tea industry is fairly stable in spite of continuing overproduction and external factors beyond its control – ongoing territorial conflicts, tariffs, rising production, transport, and labour costs. By Barbara Dufrêne.

Faced with an ongoing state of oversupply globally, the tea market is largely dominated by China, and though the genuine cups compete with coffee and herbal/ botanicals, tea production continues its steady growth.

A millenary cup originating from ancient forests in the Eastern Himalay foothills, where today borders are touching between China, India, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, tea has since spread to Japan, Korea and Vietnam over the centuries. Western consumers only discovered the cup in the early 16th century, when sea-faring explorers travelled all over the globe to find new lands and new crops. For a long time, Imperial China held the monopoly, hence tea was a heavily taxed luxury brew.

Premium RTD teas in Taiwan. Image credit: Barbara Dufrêne

However, in the early 19th century and to meet growing demand, various strategies – mainly the ‘Opium Wars’ and the smuggling out of tea plants and tea seeds – opened several Chinese ports in addition to Canton, making it possible to start tea production elsewhere in Asia. Tea production then began on colonial soils, firstly in India and Burma, in tea gardens run by British estate owners.

A few generations later, tea production was introduced to East Africa and more Southeast Asian countries. The redistribution of newly independent territories and the attempts to repair people and nations after World War II reshuffled the cards and tea, together with coffee, was labelled as an agricultural crop that generates revenue and provides income to millions of smallholder farmers. Later, new technology spurred the running of huge estates in areas with wide plains, using mechanised devices, which are fast, need less labour, and produce mainstream and commodity teas.

During the past few decades, tea cultivation has remained in the hands of the smallholders on one side, grown and harvested in mountainous and remote rural areas, considered a poverty relief crop, and as such, instrumental for keeping populations on the land. On the other side, tea is grown on huge estates owned by multinational and big private companies (in Kenya for example) and by national governments (in Indonesia and Türkiye for example). Many of the tea smallholders also grow coffee or herbs and spices, such as pepper, cardamom, lemongrass, to ensure their livelihood, but market access remains a major issue for keeping farmgate prices rewarding. This reshuffling of production patterns and the steps taken by the governments can affect output and impact the various national tea market managements in different ways, favouring growth or trending towards decline.

In 2006, there were eight tea-producing countries with an annual output volume of at least 100,000 metric tonnes (mt), ensuring 94 percent of the global harvest amounting to 3.66 million mt; China and India produced 58 percent of the total volume, followed by Sri Lanka and Kenya, Türkiye, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan. In 2024, they were seven countries that produce an annual tea volume above 100,000 metric tonnes and they ensured percent of the global harvest of 7.05 million mt. China is again on top with 3.74 million mt followed by India with 1.28 million mt, which together represent 78 percent of the global tea production. They are followed by Kenya, the world’s third largest tea producer, then Türkiye, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Japan’s production has declined to 74,000 mt.

Not only has tea production almost doubled during the past 20 years, but the share out has become intensely concentrated, with China expanding its tea volume every year.

Tea production remains dominated by black tea, with a green tea tonnage amounting to 2,172 million mt, mainly produced by China, which represents 32 percent of the total 2023 output. Looking back ten years, green tea production in amounted to 1.67 million mt, which was the same 32 percent share of the total output.

Global Exports and Imports Today

It is important to note that tea has always been the favourite cup in most of the producing countries, which means that currently over 70 percent of the production volume is retained for domestic consumption, whilst coffee is grown primarily for the export markets where over two-thirds of the cups are consumed. Coffee attracts more attention in the consumer markets with sophisticated brewing equipment, whilst tea is still brewed primarily by hand. Also, the image of tea is closely linked to leisure, whilst coffee fits with a more hectic pace.

The global trade pattern remains fairly steady, although the Covid pandemic followed by the Russia-Ukraine war have created considerable disturbance, mainly because of unavoidable delays and glutted supply logistics. The impact of the recently announced tariffs by the United States to come remains to be seen but is expected to create more burden.

Preliminary International Tea Committee (ITC) data for 2024 show a global tea export tonnage of 1.94 million mt, which represents 27.6 percent of the crop, the top five exporting countries being: Kenya, China, India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The 2023 data for the import side show that the top importing markets were: Pakistan with 236,000 mt; the Russian Federation with 129,000 mt; the USA with 104,000 mt; Egypt with 100,000 mt; the United Kingdom with 84,000 mt; and Morocco with 62,000 mt.

Green tea exports in 2023 amounted to 385,760 mt, which represents just 20 percent of global tea exports, the main suppliers being China with 309,000 mt and Vietnam with 61,000 mt. All in all, the patterns remain fairly stable in spite of the many disturbances that have hampered the traditional trade routes and in spite of increased retail prices due to increased production and transport costs. Some feedback from China seems to indicate that the small tea-grow er companies are suffering because the cost increases are not recovered, which creates concern.

Consumption Continues to Lag Behind Output

All tea-producing countries are actively promoting domestic tea consumption, be they traditional tea drinkers like China, Vietnam, Japan, or tea grow ers for export like Kenya, Rwanda, Indonesia. Sometimes the promotion in the home market works out extremely successfully, like in India, where tea was introduced by the British for the British market, but since then has become the national cup.

Another interesting case is Türkiye, originally a coffee-drinking market within the Ottoman Empire (which took coffee from Arabia to Europe in the 17th century). Deprived of its traditional coffee supply after the partitions following World War I, coffee imports had become too expensive so the government launched tea production on the shores of the Black Sea, which were soon thriving. Over the years with coffee no longer available, Turkish tea drinking surged, with an annual per capita consumption of over 3kg, ranking number one in the world. This surpasses other heavy tea drinkers, like China, with 1.92kg per head, Morocco with 1.87 kg, Ireland with 1.52kg, and the UK with 1.36 kg.

This may be food for thought, as these figures seem to show that promoting the cup in an attractive w ay can considerably increase consumption.

Tea Production by Volume in the Biggest Producing Countries

Source: International Tea Committee Ltd (ITC), Per the preliminary publication of the Annual Bulletin of Statistics 2025. Expressed in millions of metric tonnes.

To date there do not seem to be any coordinated driving forces for setting up global incentives, no platforms are available for sharing the science behind the health benefits of the cup and genuine mainstream tea remains the cheapest cup out of home.

The attractive story-telling for the premium origin teas helped develop a market segment for know ledgeable and affluent consumers, who have sufficient leisure time to prepare their cups. How ever, convenience remains a major requirement and while the ready-to-drink (RTD) segment is huge in Asia, not just sweetened and cheap, but also premium teas in RTD cans, bottles or in pow der form, so far these are not available in all Western markets.

Properly explained by trained sales personnel, they would certainly attract customers in Europe and North America. The successful of Japan’s ITO EN in the USA , with its premium Japanese green RTD teas, could pave the w ay for more quality cups, even for pricier segments.

Another option for national promotion incentives could be to revert to a project originally tabled by Kaison Chang, the former UN FAO (United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization) official in charge of IGG Tea, who retired in 2018. The plan was to launch a Global Road Safety Campaign, with a range of small RTD cans or bottles containing a strong and sweetened ‘safe driving tea’ – green, black and with added herbals. It is a fact that road safety is a huge issue, with overtired drivers, not only in China and India, but everywhere in the world! Those cans or bottles of ‘safe driving tea’ would be formally approved and labelled with the official support from the UN WHO (World Health Organization) and the UN FAO with financial subsidies from the governments.

With tea-extract factories operating in many producing countries such a ‘road safety campaign’ would not only save lives but contribute to resorb excess volume of mainstream leaf.

Looking Ahead

Today, most coffee shops will carry tea, but no tea house will offer coffee, simply because they have no coffee-brewing device. Coffee is reliant on equipment whilst tea needs only hot water, good leaves, and a strainer. Coffee brews faster than tea, and coffee is celebrated widely while tea takes more time in quiet elegance; many consumers go for both cups, coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon.

Clearly there is room for both cups, but tea still lacks global support and high level product promotion; also, there is no universally supported reference message underlining the genuine goodness of the cup. In-depth research assessing the health benefits of tea would be immensely proactive. Maybe China, the world’s number one tea producer, could be invited to coordinate work towards promoting the cup globally.

Barbara Dufrêne is the former Secretary General of the European Tea Committee and editor of La Nouvelle du Thé. She may be reached at: b-dufrê[email protected].