GLOBAL TEA PRODUCTION

Here at UKVending we love our tea, especially the full bodied and delicious Yorkshire Teas we have in our vending machines, so it’s nice to know that there is no shortage of tea in the world. Global tea production we have discovered has more than doubled in the last twenty years. This year there is 5,405 million metric tons of the stuff…more than enough for a relaxing brew or two.

So we thought it would be interesting to give you some statistics about Britain’s favourite drink.

Tea is grown commercially in over 35 countries around the world, although 90 percent of the world’s supply comes from just seven producers. China, Vietnam and Kenya have in the last few years has vastly increased production as global demand slackens.

Tea is not just used as a drink with a notable amount of global production going into such things as health supplements as well as cosmetic products.

Here in the United Kingdom tea consumption is slowly being replaced as the favourite drink by coffee, but abroad tea drinking in India is growing rapidly.

China, the traditional home of tea growing, is one of those countries where consumption and export are about the same, whilst neighbouring Japan only exports about 2 percent of the 100 million tons it produces.

Aside from the United Kingdom’s love of tea most western nations prefer the taste of coffee as their national beverage with only China, India and Turkey drinking more tea than us. In fact those three nations together drink more tea than the rest of the world combined.

One thing that surprised us at UKVending when we cast our eyes over the statistics was that Argentina is one of the world’s largest tea exporters providing over 55,291 million tons of tea into the American market last year.