Green tea is one of China's six traditional tea categories with a long history. Today, when it comes to well-known green tea brands, consumers generally first think of Hangzhou's West Lake Longjing or Anhui's Huangshan Maofeng. However, Guizhou, which has a long history of tea production and accounts for the vast majority of green tea production, has remained in the stage of diverse varieties but weak branding, with overall green tea production staying at the level of primary agricultural products processing.
A Guizhou tea company has taken an alternative route, shifting from the traditional production of original leaf tea to the modern consumer demand for matcha, by constructing the world's largest standalone matcha refinement workshop at the foot of the UNESCO World Heritage site Fanjing Mountain, with a capacity of 4,000 tons, gaining fame worldwide. The factory's location, Tongren City, is also known as the "Matcha Capital of China."◆Hong Kong Wen Wei Po reporters Li Wei and Xiong Junhui reporting from Guizhou
Guizhou is the only tea region in China that combines conditions suitable for tea cultivation and production, such as high altitude, low latitude, frequent clouds and mist, and no pollution. It is recognized by the industry as an important production area for high-quality green tea. Guizhou Tea Group, established in 2010, was initially a small enterprise with a tea garden of 20,000 mu, an output of 200 tons, and a production value of 40 million yuan (RMB, the same below).
Independently Developed: Determined Not to "Make Wedding Dresses for Others"
To promote the company's "Emerald" and "Ruby" brands, significant efforts were made in brand promotion and market development. "Even though under the government's push, consumers remembered 'Guizhou Green Tea,' the enterprise branding did not achieve the desired effect. Guizhou's tea regions were still 'making wedding dresses for others,' mostly commonly supplying cheap raw materials," said Chen Xiaoming, deputy general manager of Guizhou Tea Group.
Regional challenges haunted Guizhou Tea Group, and they realized that only continuous innovation could open up broader market space. In 2016, a procurement officer from a large foreign coffee chain that had been cooperating for many years asked Chen Xiaoming a question: "With such great ecological resources in Guizhou, clean and consistently high-quality tea leaves, why not consider producing matcha?"
This question was like a ray of light, showing Guizhou Tea Group the path ahead, which coincided with their consideration at the time of breaking regional limitations and exploring new tea domains. In fact, before this, Guizhou Tea Group had already made some attempts in basic research on instant tea, matcha, and new tea drinks, without determining the development direction.
The company promptly conducted extensive research and demonstrated the feasibility of developing the matcha industry domestically and abroad. After testing and comparing trial samples with Japanese matcha samples, it was found that the amino acid, tea polyphenol, caffeine, and other contents of Guizhou's tea plants were not different from those of high-grade Japanese matcha, with only a gap in technical production; given time, Guizhou Tea could certainly produce high-quality matcha comparable to Japan’s. Investor Wang Xiaochun was also very optimistic about matcha's prospects, boldly making a crucial strategic decision to develop 50 milling tea lines across the province within three years and immediately started site selection for building a modern matcha factory.
In 2018, Guizhou Tea Group invested 600 million yuan to build a 340-mu Guizhou Tea Industry Park and the world's largest standalone matcha workshop in Jiangkou County, Tongren City. It constructed four milling refinement production lines and four matcha production lines, with a production capacity of 4,000 tons.
Building a matcha factory in the mountains in line with international standards was not without challenges. "Initially, part of the production line equipment was imported from Japan. But even after buying good equipment, it required constant exploration of technical parameters and techniques; to reduce costs, frequent technical upgrades and improvements were also necessary to quickly achieve domestically produced equipment," said Lan Fangqiang, deputy general manager of Guizhou Tea Group.
For example, in the tea-making process, temperature control is crucial and needs to be adjusted according to local temperature, humidity, and tea-picking situations. Over-firing can lead to a decrease in the rating of the tea leaves; imported picking equipment is designed according to standardized tea gardens abroad and cannot fully adapt to local tea garden production... In the face of these issues, Guizhou Tea Group collaborated with domestic research institutions to independently develop equipment and consistently calibrate it.
Digital Empowerment Reflects Back on Front-End Planting and Processing
"Traditional tea trees have varying heights, and when mechanical pruners hit coarse branches, it damages the machines. So we collaborated with equipment manufacturers to develop semi-automated picking equipment suitable for local tea gardens, making it convenient for tea farmers to use. Meanwhile, we guide tea farmers to change planting methods in tea gardens to ensure consistent budding heights for each tea tree," said Lan Fangqiang.
Guizhou Tea Group also deeply cooperates with domestic Zhejiang Red Five Rings, Jiangnan University, Guizhou University, Guizhou Tea Research Institute, and other research institutions in milling tea equipment development, matcha derivative product development, matcha scientific research breakthroughs, and more. From relying 100% on imported equipment when building the matcha super factory, as of now, the equipment localization rate has reached 80%.
Different from traditional tea companies with low entry barriers, matcha technology has relatively higher thresholds, requiring full mechanization, standardization, and large-scale mass production, with higher demands on production and processing conditions. Hong Kong Wen Wei Po reporters entered the matcha production workshop, where the modern grinding refinement workshop, matcha sieving workshop, and matcha milling workshop were in order. Except for a few processes needing manual assistance, about 95% of refinement steps are machine-completed.
Lan Fangqiang told Hong Kong Wen Wei Po reporters that the factory has established a traceable planting system from the tea garden to the tea cup, empowered by big data, using accumulated and analyzed backend data to guide front-end planting and processing techniques. "From tea garden pest and disease control to fully mechanized harvesting, we strictly ensure quality."
Expanding Boundaries with Domestic and Overseas Brands Competing for Cooperation
With the rise of the domestic new tea drink market, more and more tea drink brands are seeking cooperation with "European standard matcha," opening new markets for Guizhou Tea Group. Currently, Guizhou Tea has jointly introduced multiple popular matcha beverages with new tea brands such as Queteashan, Yihetang, Haidilao, and coco and has created a "wine-tea fusion" new model, launching joint products with companies like Moutai and Yanghe. Internationally, Guizhou Tea Group is also China's largest supplier for international restaurant giants and chain brands, favored by customers in North America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
At the same time, Guizhou Tea Group is not limited to selling matcha raw materials and actively develops extended matcha products, opening its own offline store – Guizhou Tea Trendy Drink and Baking Experience Store, forming a strategic development layout of "High-Grade Tea + Matcha + Tea Drinks," continuously broadening matcha applications. "We have also developed over 20 matcha derivative products such as matcha latte, matcha cookies, matcha ice cream, matcha snacks," Chen Xiaoming said, explaining that these products not only enrich consumer choices but also bring matcha into people's lives in more diverse ways.
Now, Guizhou Tea Group's annual matcha production and sales volume has surpassed 1,000 tons, with 40% exported abroad, becoming a raw material supplier for international chain baking shops, coffee shops, and drink shops in more than 40 countries and regions, including Germany, the U.S., Canada, and Japan. In 2023, matcha sales have exceeded 70% of the group’s total revenue, earning fame for this "World Matcha Super Factory" at the foot of Fanjing Mountain.
"In recent years, as the original leaf tea market has shrunk, our company’s sales have bucked the trend, entirely benefiting from switching to a new track. The scale and refined management of the matcha factory also feed back into the upgrade and transformation of the original leaf tea, driving Guizhou Tea Group's transition from a traditional enterprise to a modernized and intelligent one," introduced Chen Xiaoming, noting that the group plans to achieve 2,000 tons of matcha production and sales by 2027, becoming the world's leading company in the matcha segment field.