STiR coffee and tea magazine

42 STiR coffee and tea | 2022 Issue 5 (October/November) tea across several time zones could be partially automated, an idea that was quickly embraced not by tea professionals but by coffee businesses, which provided $1.4 million to finance early development. ProfilePrint delivers results in seconds so buyers and sellers can discuss the results in real-time, he explained. "We are democratizing expertise in the AI models, such that even a farmer who is not an expert in grading but an expert in growing tea, will now be able to assess straightaway the profile. This unbiased reference point enables the tea maker to share profiles with potential wholesalers before they ship samples for buyers to see, touch, and taste," said Lai. Whatever his love for tea, Lai found it easier to work with coffee in Profile Print's early days. Coffee was less of a chal- lenge, thanks to cupping parameters that have been well estab- lished by the Specialty Coffee Association. SCA's methodology provided a taste profile that ProfilePrint's technology could use as a reference point. "When we started with tea, we wanted to standardize a pro- file to give traders, farmers, and consumers a common refer- ence point. Half a decade ago, maybe the industry wasn't quite ready," Lai said. He expects that the tea industry will follow the coffee sec- tor's path in developing its own parameters, despite the many different types of tea available, and that AI can then further as- sist in indexing a product. "Brokers who establish, let's say, 10 parameters that essen- tially define their ideal tea can use these parameters to build and train a model to identify variations. It's customizable. Value ad- dition comes from the expertise of the user. The more you train it, the more value you get out of the model," he said. When wholesalers precisely describe the profiles they are seeking, "you do not need to go through the process of send- ing samples, confirming arrival, then tasting different lots while asking again and again if they are satisfied before you complete the order," he said. "Traveling itself is a huge cost, whether it's due to Covid re- strictions or whether it's due to adding carbon emissions to the environment," Lai observed. "The world of digitization saves costs." A benchtop chemistry analyzer serves as the hardware component of ProfilePrint's system. Photo courtesy ProfilePrint Authentication Currently, tea industry buyers use product labels to authenticate product, but labels are prone to misrepresentation and fraud. Wholesalers who fail to analyze samples frequently discover adulteration. A common ploy is to dry mix previously brewed "spent leaf" with processed tea. Consumers are often deceived into buying tea labeled 100% Darjeeling, for example, when a seller may actually provide a blend that includes as little as 20% genuine Darjeeling. Prof- ilePrint accurately recognizes tea leaves of the same type while differentiating between different tea regions, production meth- ods, and even between different seasons. "The methodology allows us to authenticate the tea leaves sold by retailers or wholesalers," Lai explained. "ProfilePrint can also trace specific chemical compounds that exist only in, let's say, a Vietnamese city. Otherwise, you may need to go to a lab with expensive testing equipment. They take a longer time, they are destructive, and they obviously require experts to be able to do that." From mass to class Digital product profiles can be used in sourcing specialty teas as well as commodity product. Multinationals that sell mass-market blends need to sample to ensure consistency because they source many different teas in large quantities from growers of different origins. Seventy-five percent of the world's tea is sold at public auction. For example, some 450,000 metric tons of tea are sold yearly via tea auctions in Mombasa, Kenya. Weeks before each auction there, and at similar events in Sri Lanka and across India, sellers prepare and share thousands of samples with bidders. Brokers and corporate buyers value each lot based on qual- ity, freshness, distinctiveness, style, and the price paid for similar teas in the previous auction. They also factor in historical aver- ages based on sales in previous years. In addition, every lot has a unique number, a factory mark, grade, invoice number, type and quantity of packages, and net weight. Digital profiles can help streamline and objectify much of this data to make pricing and selection easier. Digital profiles can also help screen samples of specialty leaf in the direct-sale process, where buyers contact sellers directly, negotiating price and quantity privately. Skillful sampling is es- sential for growers to receive full value. Buyers sample to ensure that a premium tea will meet the expectations of consumers. Prospects It's too early to say whether ProfilePrint will succeed in its mis- sion, or be sidelined by competitors, or discover that its technol- ogy simply doesn't find enough customers. But one big believer is Cargill. In a press release, Francesca Kleemans, managing director for Cargill's cocoa and chocolate business in the Asia Pacific region, said that ProfilePrint "holds the potential to transform the global food-ingredient supply chain, strengthening the sensory innovation capabilities of our ingredient portfolio without compromising on taste and quality. This can help Cargill deliver against our high standards for food quality and enable faster and more precise product development for our customers."

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