This article reports on discussions at the September 2026 North American Tea Conference about changing perceptions of tea value, including the Canadian Fairtrade organization's sharing of banana industry transformation experiences and data on rising export volumes and prices of Japanese powdered green tea, emphasizing the need for industry collaboration to enhance product value.
Shuangjiang County in Lincang City, Yunnan Province, has deeply integrated talent with the tea industry through platform building, mechanism innovation, and ecosystem optimization. In 2025, the comprehensive output value of the tea industry exceeded 10.4 billion yuan, injecting strong momentum into rural revitalization.
Leveraging its high altitude, low latitude, and cloudy natural conditions, Tongren, Guizhou has developed industrial tourism, experience halls, themed homestays, and other formats around matcha. It has covered 7 key tea-producing counties and 34 tea-growing townships, driving the large-scale development of 44 tencha enterprises and providing tea farmers with more stable income.
The Guideline for Tea Industry Quality Improvement and Upgrading (2026-2030) has been officially issued, clarifying full-chain carbon reduction deployment from planting, processing, packaging to carbon trading, promoting tea tourism integration and monetization of tea garden carbon sinks, and providing a new path for high-quality development of the tea industry.
The 2026 Guangdong Provincial Tea Industry Vocational Skills Competition was held in Chaozhou from October 15 to 17, featuring three events: tea processing, tea evaluation, and tea artistry, with 148 participants. The competition aligned with national vocational skill standards, moving venues into tea mountains, factories, and schools to promote skilled talent development through practical contests.
The second member congress of the Fujian Tea Distribution Association was held in Fuzhou, electing a new council and supervisory board. Lin Qin was elected council president, and Gui Hongbo was elected chief supervisor. The new association will focus on the coordinated development of tea culture, tea industry, and tea technology, promoting production-marketing integration, industry services, and brand building.
Huang Rongjun, a tea farmer in Guidong County, attended a high-quality farmer training program organized by the county, learning e-commerce operations and short video production. He plans to open a livestream room, use AI to optimize scripts and product introductions, and sell his hometown tea across the country.
French luxury tea brand Mariage Frères launched its 2026 Christmas collection on October 22 at its Covent Garden tea house in London, featuring a range of festive tea blends and gift boxes, with some items exclusive and the rest available worldwide.
Yuhang District in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, is building a high-standard matcha raw material base with Jingshan Town as the core, and preparing to establish a national matcha technology innovation center. The area now has more than 20 matcha producers. In 2025, its matcha output accounted for nearly one-third of China's total, with output value exceeding 540 million yuan.
The 2026 China Black Tea Conference was held in Lichuan, Hubei. The event was themed around integrating tea and tourism under the slogan "Tea and Tourism Revitalize Together, Lichuanhong at Its Best," and reviewed Lichuanhong's development from a local black tea variety into a regional public brand. An evaluation released in November 2025 showed the Lichuanhong regional public brand value reached RMB3.901 billion, and export volume in 2025 increased tenfold year-on-year.
ZeLang Group has put into operation a 1,000-tonne matcha smart production line in Nanjing's Lishui district, producing fine matcha powder at 1,000 mesh and above. Orders worth 60 million yuan were received within the first month.
