STiR coffee and tea magazine

20 STiR coffee and tea | 2026 Quarter 1 Spring (Mar/Apr/May) F By Dorian Karahalios Aloha Cha: Hawaii's Burgeoning Tea Industry Tea Hawaii & Co founders, Eva Lee (left) and her husband, Chiu Leong (right), believe Hawaii's growing tea industry is built on cooperation, collaboration, and community. Photo credit: Tea Hawaii & Co Many producers on the island focus on premium shade and forest-grown loose-leaf teas. Photo credit: Tea Hawaii & Co or many visitors, the Hawaiian Islands are known for their warm sandy beaches, stunning green landscapes, fresh seafood, and salt-kissed breezes. Within the state's agricultural hall of fame reside coffee, pineapple, sugarcane, and macada- mia nuts, but hidden among its farming community is a small yet established collection of growers producing premium tea. For the past twenty years, USDA, in cooperation with other organizations such as the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's (UHM) College of Tropical Agriculture and Hu- man Resilience (CTAHR), has been funding studies assessing the economic viability of Hawaii-grown tea as a specialty crop. To date, the majority of growers focus on premium loose-leaf tea, including white, pan-fired green, oolong, and black teas, as well as an experimental pivot into tea powders and matcha. Moving into 2026, many Hawaii tea growers believe the industry is on the cusp of explosive growth, with many efforts being focused on collective processing, bringing in new farmers, and reducing the cost of agricultural inputs. A Culture of Independence: A Future of Cooperation Eva Lee, founder of Tea Hawaii & Co., along with husband Chiu Leong, has been a longtime advocate for and participant in Hawaii's tea industry. Located in Volcano Village on Hawaii Island, Lee's company not only produces shade-grown and forest- grown premium tea but also provides processing facilities and services for other local tea growers. Clients for Hawaii's tea producers range from individual consumers to wholesale partners in countries as widespread as Canada, Germany, the UK, Denmark, and Tai- wan. However, due to a reduction in public funding for tea research, as well as Hawaii's lack of an established tea organization for information to pass through, Lee says pro- duction numbers are hard to pin down. "There are so many growers doing so many different types of teas and servicing different markets," she notes. While historically only a few local growers have been interested in coopera- tive integration, Lee continues to expand her processing facilities, keeping an eye on the future. Recently, she has added a ball mill for grinding tea into powder and a multi-hopper filter bag filler, and plans on purchasing a steamer for tencha, the precursor to matcha, and a new building to support tea processing. The goal: to provide a centralized facility for Hawaii Island's growers to process their tea. "There is a cultural challenge among tea growers," says Lee, "in the state of Hawaii as well as in the Southeast US. They're not necessarily interested in in- tegrating with each other." But Lee be- lieves the industry is at a turning point. "This next generation doesn't have that same attitude," she says. In other countries, tea-growing com- munities support one another and have done so for generations. Lee says that here in the West, tea growers lack that history of community support. The art-

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