STiR coffee and tea magazine

Volume 10, Number 4

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STiR coffee and tea 27 Tea expertise. Use that knowledge to your benefit. With our outstanding experience in tea buying and blend development, we offer you high-quality teas, sophisticated for- mulations and latest tea innovations. Independently. Personally. Since 1992. Get an impression of us: www.kktee.de The Shenzhen-based company, founded by husband wife team (Zhao Lin and Peng Lin respectively who each own 28% of the company) opened a single shop in 2014 quickly followed by two more after testing the market pioneered by cross-town rival Hey Tea, a privately held company estimated to also be worth several billion. Nayuki differentiated their product by using premium quality fruit in their blends and introducing a new flavor weekly. Nayuki's mainland China locations in densely popu- lated tier 1 cities offer popular bakery items, including coffee and stacks for office workers. See: 'New Style Tea' Trending in Bubble Tea Lands The company intends to open 300 more locations in China in 2021 and 350 in 2022. International locations include Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In its IPO filing, Nayuki reported daily revenue per store averaged RMB20,200 (US$3,125.00) last year compared to an average of RMB27,700 in 2019. Profit margins fell from 21% to 13.5% due to Covid-19 lockdowns that temporarily closed 500 locations but returned to 17.3% for the second half of 2020 on revenue of $445 million. Online orders continue to outnumber in-person orders in most locations with delivery to offices replacing individual visits. Sales increased 25% despite a bad year, according to the prospectus. The IPO debuted before a planned IPO by Hey Tea, a larger closely held venture with more than 500 Chinese locations that has also established a foothold in the US. Euromonitor estimates Hey Tea holds 8.8% share of China's tea and coffee shop market. Starbucks holds 36.4% share overall but warned in its November annual report that "Entry of new competitors to the specialty coffee market in China" presents a significant risk to profits there. China is the second largest market for Starbucks globally. In China, tea shops outnumber coffee shops by 4:1. At Nayuki, fruit teas are the most popular drink, ordered by 83% of customers, followed by milk tea (65%). A consumer survey in January 2020 for the first time showed sales of non-sweetened products outselling calorie-rich cheese tea. Cheese is the topping favored by 75.4% of customers. Out with Synthetic Fertilizers, Ban Pesticides! Sri Lanka boldly declares its intention to become the cleanest tea in the world. Tea growers are adjusting to Sri Lanka's sudden and surprising ban on fertilizers and agrochemicals including insecticides, miticides, fungicides, and herbicides. The government's broad and controversial edict in May halted the import of synthetic agrochemicals that will force the nation to adopt organic alternatives. The initial undertaking labeled regenerative organic agriculture (ROA), begins a transition stage in which agrochemicals that are still available are judiciously spread during the next few months. Instead of widespread application, tea growers are applying what remains on poorer soils that will take longer to regenerate. Meanwhile, growers are turning to imported manure and compost that is certified organic, and planting nitrogen-rich cover crops necessary to produce millions of tons of compost at the farm level. The program is expansive, addressing cultivation on depleted soil, aging stock, labor issues, domestic consumption, and export to make tea grown there pristine and profitable. Fertilizers are a flashpoint as delays prevented delivery to smallholders at a critical period in the harvest cycle. Recent exemptions for plant nurseries raising tea and other essential uses demonstrate that the ban is not absolute. Growers say that it will take 3-5 years to transition plants from synthetic to organic fertilizer during which quality and yield will decline, reducing export volume. The beneficial trade- off is better pricing at auction. Maintaining high tea export volumes is essential for Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million that produces a hundred times more tea than could be consumed locally. Tea growers comprise only 5% of agricultural workers, but their combined output generates more than $1 billion annually in foreign exchange dollars. Whole and broken leaf tea is what separates Sri Lanka from commodity producers in Kenya and India. Orthodox process- Tea Report

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