STiR coffee and tea magazine

30 STiR coffee and tea | 2024 Issue 3 (June / July) Gen Z buyers are purpose-driven and socially conscious: they want sustainable farming practices and social welfare for the workers. Lipton buys more than half its black tea from Kenya. before CVC acquired it from Unilever in 2022 and sold it to Browns in 2024. Lipton, which is the world's largest buyer of Kenyan tea, has been taking steps to address the labor abuses that were un- covered in a BBC investigation last year. (See the Divesting Tea Gardens sidebar for more information.) With the recent sale of Lipton to Browns, descendants of the original com- munities are fighting back. They want to buy the Lipton Kenya estates, which comprise 11 plantations and 8 factories across the Kericho, Bomet, and Limuru counties in western Kenya's tea-growing heartland. The communities formed a consor- tium and expressed an interest in buying the Kenyan tea estates that private equity group CVC purchased from Unilever. They claim their interest was ignored, and CVC sold to Browns. The communities sought 100% own- ership shares, citing historical land injus- tices and forced eviction from their an- cestral land. Browns offered a 15% stake. Purpose-Driven Buyers Are the New Market Questions over the community's right to the land and the inherited checkered history of tea are new areas of environ- mental, social, and governance (ESG) concern for Browns. One they will con- sider deeply. ESG is an important social construct for the new market comprised of Gen Z buyers. These buyers are purpose-driven, socially conscious, and keenly interested in the story of what they purchase. No doubt, the new generation of tea drink- ers will do their due diligence to learn exactly how their tea goes from farm to cup. They've been raised in the age of fair trade and fair play, after all, and their mantra does seem to be sustainability. But sustainability has more aspects than the farming segment. It also encom- passes sustainable livings for those who bring them their tea. Sustainable livings in terms of dignity, respect, as well as pay. Purpose-driven buyers, driven by the new market power of Gen Z, want to sit back and sip their tea. Will corporate tea serve it up according to the evolving defi- nition of sustainability?

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