WHY FOREIGNERS ARE BEATING CHINA'S TEA-MAKERS ON THEIR HOME TURF

WHY FOREIGNERS ARE BEATING CHINA'S TEA-MAKERS ON THEIR HOME TURF
By Tom Miller 2009-10-10

China is rightly proud of being the home of tea, the world's most popular drink. Celebratory cups of cha were sipped when China recently regained from India its historical position as the world's pre-eminent tea producer and consumer after a 100-year hiatus.

But the country's failure to produce a single internationally recognised tea brand is a source of frustration for cheerleaders of the native Camellia sinensis leaf.

Both at home and abroad, Chinese tea brands struggle to compete with foreign competitors. In China, Unilever's Lipton brand has a market-leading share three times that of its closest local rival.

“Why is Lipton more powerful than 70,000 Chinese tea companies?” lamented a recent article in a Beijing newspaper.

The challenges facing China's tea industry are the same as those facing a host of Chinese industries: product quality issues; excessive competition in the domestic market; low prices and meagre earnings abroad; and weak branding.

The root cause of these weaknesses is simple: extreme market fragmentation.

The problem begins on the tea plantations. Around 8m farmers work on plantations across the tea-growing areas of central, southern and western China, mostly tending tiny household plots. Consolidation of the land into larger plantations is constrained by China's land laws, which prevent farmers from owning – and therefore selling – their land.

The result is that China's tea industry is far less industrialised than in less economically developed countries such as Kenya or India. In Zhejiang, one of China's largest tea-growing and richest provinces, there are over 1m smallholdings, each averaging less than 0.2 hectares.

Monitoring quality across millions of scattered tea gardens is an impossible task, and Chinese tea exporters have consistently had trouble meeting foreign safety standards. Chinese tea sells for an average of just US$2 per kg on international markets, compared with US$2.70 for Indian tea or US$3.40 for highly regarded Sri Lankan leaves.

Chinese exporters will not get consistently good prices for their tea in international markets until quality controls are improved across the board, which first requires far greater consolidation of plantations and tea processing factories.

At home, fierce competition among thousands of producers and brands translates into puny market shares and slim profits. Chinese teas are traditionally sold by type and place of origin, rather than by brand, and every region has its own local favourite.

Leading brands like Lipton, on the other hand, understand that creating mass value depends on nationwide marketing and an efficient, integrated distribution network. Lipton sources cheap tea from independent producers, packages it into teabags, and markets its distinctly average “Yellow Label” brew at an outrageous mark-up.

It's not great tea, but it is great business.

In China's highly fragmented retail market, no national brand has emerged to knock Lipton off its perch. Instead, premium players selling organic teas are attempting to carve out lucrative niches, both at home and abroad.

Take, for example, the tea grown by the Hunan Tea Company on White Cloud Mountain in the southern province of Hunan, where the warm, wet climate and the deep red-brown soil is perfect for cultivating quality tea leaves.

Behind a copse of dark green conifers, bees buzz lazily over neat rows of shiny tea bushes soaking up the summer sun. A list of rules pinned to a board instructs tea-pickers not to keep long fingernails or to powder their faces; smoking is banned. Instead of pesticides, bug-zappers protect the crop from leafhoppers and other tea-loving pests.

When these virgin leaves are picked next spring, one batch will be shipped to Japan and sold as high-grade organic tea under the exclusive Kaito Brothers label; another will be packaged for the domestic market under the award-winning Guanyuan brand, priced at a hefty US$100 for two small 10g boxes.

Wealthy Japanese and Chinese tea drinkers will happily spend hundreds of dollars on the best spring-picked leaves, much as Western oenophiles splash out on a good bottle of wine.

But speciality teas will not bring China the international brand recognition it craves. For that to happen, widespread industrial consolidation and far more sophisticated marketing are needed.

Despite having the oldest tea producer in the world, China has only begun to create a modern tea industry. It has a long way to go before local tea companies reach the economies of scale and branding expertise needed to capture the full value of their product.

In the meantime, the big revenues will be scooped up by strong foreign brands selling convenience and lifestyle. Anyone for a cup of Yellow Label?

中国：没有名牌的茶叶大国

作者：英国《金融时报》汤姆•米勒(Tom Miller) 2009-10-10

作为全球最受欢迎饮品——茶叶的故乡，中国完全有理由感到自豪。在世界最大产茶国及消费国的头衔旁落100年后，中国最近从印度手中夺回了这一历史地位。

但中国未能打造出一个全球知名的茶叶品牌，是本土茶叶的支持者们感到沮丧的原因之一。

无论是在国内还是在国外，中国的茶叶品牌都难以与国外竞争者相抗衡。在中国，联合利华(Unilever)的立顿(Lipton)品牌占有的市场份额，是仅次于它的本土竞争对手的三倍。

“中国7万家茶场为啥抵不上一个‘立顿'茶？”北京的一家报纸最近在一篇文章中遗憾地表示。

中国茶叶行业面临着与中国其它许多行业相同的挑战：产品质量问题；国内市场过度竞争；海外售价太低、利润微薄；品牌塑造水平不高。

这些缺点的根源很简单：市场过度分散。

这个问题从茶园就开始了。在中国中部、南部和西部的产茶区，约有800万农民在茶园内劳作，其中大多是面积很小的自留地。将土地合并为面积更大的种植园受到中国土地法的限制——根据中国的土地法，土地所有权不归农民所有，因此他们也不能出售土地。

结果，中国茶叶行业的工业化程度远低于肯尼亚和印度等经济发达程度较低的国家。浙江省是中国的产茶大省和最富裕的省份之一，那里有100多万家小茶园，平均面积不足0.2公顷。

监控数百万家星罗棋布的茶园的质量，无疑是痴人说梦，而且中国的茶叶出口商一向难以达到国外的安全标准。在国际市场上，中国茶叶的平均售价仅为每千克2美元，低于印度茶叶的2.7美元，以及备受赞誉的斯里兰卡茶叶的3.4美元。

除非质量控制得到全面改善，否则中国的出口商就无法让自己的茶叶在国际市场上持续卖出好价钱。而要想有所改善，首先就要对茶园和茶叶加工厂进行大力整合。

在中国本土，数千家生产商和品牌之间的激烈竞争，导致各自只能获得极小的市场份额和微薄的利润。中国茶叶一般按照品种和产地出售，而非品牌，而各个地区都有自己最喜爱的本地品牌。

另一方面，立顿等领先品牌明白，创造集合价值有赖于全国性的市场营销以及高效的一体化分销网络。立顿从独立茶商手中收购廉价茶叶，装进茶包，再以高得离谱的价格，出售其再普通不过的“黄牌精选红茶”

它的茶并不出色，但运作却相当出色。

在中国高度分散的零售市场，还没有哪个本土品牌能取代立顿的地位。相反，出售有机茶的高端生产商正试图在国内外开拓利润丰厚的利基市场。

以湖南省茶业有限公司在该省白云山种植的茶叶为例。白云山气候温暖潮湿，有深厚的红棕色土壤，是种植高品质茶叶的理想之地。

在一片墨绿色的针叶林背后，一排排整齐的茶树丛闪闪发亮，沐浴在夏日的阳光下，蜜蜂嗡嗡作响，懒洋洋地在枝头盘绕。一块板子上写着一系列规定，要求 采茶者不得蓄长指甲，不得在脸上搽粉；严禁吸烟。这里不使用杀虫剂，而是电子灭虫器来保护茶树免受叶蝉及其它嗜茶叶害虫的侵害。

这些新茶在来年春天被摘下来后，有一批会运往日本，贴上海东兄弟(Kaito Brothers)的标签，作为高级有机茶出售；另一批将包装成获奖的“冠云”品牌，在国内市场销售，两小袋10克装茶叶就能卖出100美元的高价。

富有的日本和中国饮茶者很乐意掏数百美元购买春天采摘的顶级茶叶，就像西方的爱酒人士会一掷千金购买一瓶上等红酒一样。

但特制茶不会给中国带来它所渴望的国际品牌认知度。要想获得国际认知，中国必须进行广泛的行业整合和更加老练的市场营销。

尽管拥有世界上最古老的茶业生产商，但中国的现代茶业才刚刚起步。本土茶叶公司要实现规模经济、获得挖掘出产品全部价值所必需的品牌塑造技能，还有很长一段路要走。

在此之前，大块收入还会被主打便利和生活时尚牌的有实力的外国品牌抢走。有人要来一杯立顿红茶吗？

译者/陈云飞