STiR coffee and tea magazine

28 STiR coffee and tea | 2025 Quarter 4 Winter (Dec/Jan/Feb) A rare example of a raw Pu'er tea cake openly labeled as tea from Laos. Vietnamese tea brick labeled as prized Yiwu tea. 38,000 RMB as of June 2025, which means that the 2025 price dipped by about 80% compared to the peak in 2021. Another example is the longstanding Pu'er company, Pu'er Lancang Ancient Tea Co., Ltd., which became the first Pu'er tea company to be publicly listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2024 and was heralded as "China's third largest Pu'er com- pany." After stock value surged by 16.43% in 2024, Pu'er Lancang Ancient Tea Co., Ltd., shareholders experienced a rude awakening when the company announced that its annual projected earnings for 2025 would be reduced to 360-370 million RMB, a year-on-year decline of 30-32%, with company owners reporting personal losses of 96.5-120 million RMB. Pu'er Lancang Ancient Tea Co., Ltd., cited poor brick and mortar sales of existing warehouse inventory, which makes up 67.3% of the company's capital, forcing the company to slash prices on its benchmark "1966" product series, earning just 37.4% profit in 2024 as compared to roughly 70% profit in previous years. A 2024 report by the China Tea Marketing Association estimated a warehouse inventory turnover time of 32 months across the Pu'er industry, indicating that these two cases are not isolated incidents. The Slowdown Ripple Hits Vietnamese Tea Producers The same forces impacting the Pu'er mar- ket are also affecting the Liu Bao market. When most Chinese buyers stopped pur- chasing tea material in 2024, Vietnamese che vang producers felt the impact. Although the traditional Ha Giang mao cha (che vang) is a critical ingredi- ent to creating the characteristic aroma of Liu Bao tea, most Vietnamese tea makers lack the training or facilities to complete the final processing steps needed to make or properly store dark teas, and the local market for dark tea in Vietnam remains in its infancy. This left some tea factories in northern Vietnam with full warehous- es of unsold material in 2024, with zero market alternatives available. The Benefits of Branding Despite cracks appearing in the invest- ment market, the China Tea Marketing Association still reported over 6% mar- ket growth in the Pu'er tea industry. The overall market trend in China seems to be shifting towards "delicious tea at an affordable price," and the window for mass profit margins from mislabeled teas appears to be narrowing. In this environ- ment, perhaps new opportunities await teas from Southeast Asia. Deng Shengkang, a tea farmer who produces raw Pu'er in Seohopene, a vil- lage in northwestern Laos bordering Guafengzhai, noted, "We have been us- ing the local names of Lengshuihe and Heishuiliangzi for selling our products in China since 2023. Tea from those two places sold well in 2025, but teas from other areas struggled." On the rare occasions when the in- dustry allowed its curtains to crack just a bit, the taste of the tea is what mattered most, as when Feng Cuiyu's mentor stunned customers by openly identify- ing a Liu Bao tea crafted in 2011 as using 100% Ha Giang material, or when Deng Shengkang's teas reached the Chinese market openly labeled as teas from Laos. Zheng surveys the stack of Spring Dew tea cakes on his shelf. "I'd like to start labeling these teas as Vietnamese," he says. In the meantime, the GI labels of Pu'er and Liu Bao remain in place, and the majority of Southeast Asian teas, which have been pleasing customers for decades, remain anonymous.

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