GLOBAL TEA CONSUMPTION REGISTERING TREMENDOUS GROWTH...

20/06/2019

The global tea industry has been registering tremendous growth. The overall increase in domestic consumption has been driven by demographic growth, faster urbanization and rising incomes and standard of living in the emerging and developing economies.

Persistence Market Research (PMR) expects the global market to expand at 5 percent at average between 2016 and 2024, reaching a value of USD 21.33 Billion.

The figures were presented at a public dialogue on “Global tea consumption: emerging trends and lessons from Russia”, held in Sochi, Russia.

“The public dialogue assessed major trends in tea consumption, discussed factors behind the current global tea consumption renewal before underlining major characteristics of the emerging tea consumer who is more and more conscious about the history behind the sip of tea he/she enjoys,” Jean Luc Mastaki, FAO Senior Economist and Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG/Tea) Secretariat Member, underlined.

“The emerging consumption trends urge the tea industry to enhance transparency, value addition, product diversification and “premiumization” while fostering environmental and social sustainability,” the FAO expert noted.

New market trends are showing consumers moving away from other drinks to tea due to a wide range of innovative value added products and an increasing perception of tea as a healthy beverage. Consumption “renewal” is also driven by the increase in use of tea bags in developing and emerging markets traditionally dominated by loose leaves. Tea consumers are willing to spend more on the teas they consume with a shift towards premium products.

GOURMET QUALITY TEA

Young people, a major and fast growing segment of the market, are continuously searching for personal experience with a fashionable product and integrating the gourmet quality tea into their life style. The growing retail sector is innovatively catering for new preferences through a diversity of tea origins and flavours.

The modern tea consumer is more conscious than ever about making responsible choices in terms of sustainability, featuring environmental, social, economic and ethical issues in consumption choices.

UNTAPPED POTENTIAL DEMAND

Despite this trend, there is still a huge untapped potential demand in the tea market. Most countries still present low per capita consumption levels. The global tea industry needs to be proactive and understand its demand in order to aggressively develop its market.

Successful generic advertising, which shifts the demand curve outward by attracting new consumers and enticing existing consumers to increase their purchases or pay a higher price, has to be informed by a strong market intelligence at global and national levels.

Source: FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations)