Dengcun tea drops the middlemen
Dengcun tea is appreciated as far afield as Morocco, West Africa and the United Arab Emirates. But, until now, the producer - Hubei Manjianghong Tea Industry - had to rely on middlemen to get its product to foreign markets. That has now changed.
On December 14, fifteen tons of green tea was dispatched from the company’s warehouse in Dengcun Township on its way to St. Petersburg in Russia, 7600 km away. This is the first time that Dengcun has exported tea on its own.
Dengcun Township - in the northwest of Yichang’s Yiling District - has a tea planting area of 5,900 hectares, and produces tea to the value of 615 million yuan (US$ 88.2 million) each year.
Hubei Manjianghong Tea Industry, founded in 2019, is one of Dengcun Township’s leading enterprises. It buys, processes and sells tea, and obtained the all-important right to handle its own exports this year.
“Before, foreign trade companies in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Anhui and other places took care of the exports for us. But that indirect export model consumed part of the profit. Now that we are authorized to export on our own, we expect to export 3-5 million US dollars worth of tea in 2023, with profit up by about 10 percent,” said Tian Longwei, from the Dengcun Township Economic and Trade Office.
