West Asia Shipping Crisis Cuts India's Q1 Tea Exports 17%, and Orthodox's Main Market Is the Exposure

India exported a record 280.40 million kilograms of tea in 2025, but the first quarter of 2026 tells the harder story: shipments fell 21.01 million kilograms against the same months a year earlier, a decline of about 17%, as conflict and disrupted shipping lanes cut into West Asia. That region buys nearly half of India's tea, and for the orthodox grade it is closer to the whole market.

West Asian countries took 122.49 million kilograms of Indian tea in 2025, and four of them, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, accounted for about 40% of total exports the year before. The exposure is concentrated in orthodox, the whole-leaf style India sells at a premium over the CTC grade that dominates the domestic cup. Close to half of Assam's orthodox production is consumed by Iran alone, exporters say, which makes a single strained trade route a problem for the country's most valuable tea.

That route runs through the Strait of Hormuz, and the traffic has been moving the long way round. Vessels diverted around the Cape of Good Hope face delays of 10 to 20 days, and some consignments have arrived more than 40 days late, according to figures cited by trade bodies in Guwahati. For a perishable crop sold on freshness and matched to a buyer's season, a six-week delay is not a scheduling nuisance. It is a discount.

Iran alone normally buys about a fifth of India's total tea exports, some 30 to 35 million kilograms of mostly orthodox tea a year, and industry figures say that volume has been sliding for several years, squeezed first by dollar-payment restrictions and now by the wider regional conflict. "The war in the Middle East will have an impact on tea exports from India," said Mohit Agarwal, a leading exporter, who put Iran's share of Assam orthodox at roughly half. Dinesh Bihani, secretary of the Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers Association, has said the demand disruption in Iran and the rest of West Asia can push tea prices down if the market does not find other buyers to absorb the surplus.

Not everyone will commit to the size of the hit. Anshuman Kanoria, chairman of the Indian Tea Exporters Association, said in March that payments for tea already shipped to Iran were stuck and shipments still at sea left exporters facing "uncertainty and worry," with freight rates that had held steady now at risk of spiking. Trade estimates cited alongside the Q1 figures put full-year 2026 exports on course to fall at least 20% if the disruption holds, though that projection rests on the shipping lanes staying closed, which no one can price with confidence. What the figures already show is plainer: the record volumes of 2025 were built on a West Asian trade that the first quarter of 2026 has started to take back, and the orthodox growers of Assam, with the fewest alternative buyers, stand first in line to feel it.

Sources: The Federal, Record tea export gains at risk as West Asia crisis chokes shipping routes; The Assam Tribune, Tea industry concerned over Iran/Middle East conflict impact on Assam orthodox exports; Business Standard, Tea exporters brace for disruption as West Asia conflict hits shipments; STiR Coffee and Tea Magazine, Iran Tea Imports Decline 62%.