Production & Harvests

The Economics of the Tea Bag: How a Packing Machine, Not the Leaf, Built the Format Most of the World Drinks

The tea bag began as a shipping accident, but what made it cheap enough to dominate the world market was a German packing machine, and what still shapes its cost today is the material of the sachet itself.

Why a Five-Year Crop Can't Meet a Two-Year Demand Surge

Global matcha demand grew several-fold in barely two years, driven by social media and a tourism surge, and hit a ceremonial-grade tencha supply that takes five years to plant and forty grams an hour to grind. Record auction prices and allocation-only sales followed, not a failure of the harvest.