The tea factory

[Manfred M]

This is not one of my usual postings, but more of a documentary on tea production. We spent three nights of our trip staying on tea plantations. We met the owner of one of the plantations (a small one that only produces about 1 million kg of tea per year / 2.2 million pounds) and were able to arrange for a tour of the tea processing factory.

Step 1 - drying the tea leaves - tea was piled around 15 cm / 6 in deep in these drying chambers. Air was blown through from underneath until the tea was dry enough to start the processing operation. This initial drying stage takes 12 to 18 hours.





Step 2 - the dry tea is transported by conveyor into the factory, where it is dumped onto a belt and fed to the processing machines. Here the tea is chopped up. In this image one can see batches of tea moving down a conveyor belt and into the machine hopper.





Step 3 - Shredding - a combination of belt and toothed steel roller are used to tear the cut tea into smaller pieces.







Step 4 - Tea leaf shaping - the shreded tea leaves travel through these large rotating drums that cause the leaves to curl over on themselves, creating an even shape for optimal brewiing.





Step 5 - Fermentation - Up until now, the tea is a green tea, but this heated belt is used to ferment the tea and convert the green tea to black tea. The temperature is carefully monitored and the tea is turned to ensure even fermentaiton. One can see the colour of the tea changing from green to dark brow and the tea moves along the fermentor belt.







Step 6 - Drying - the tea undergoes one final drying set to remove most of the moisture so that the tea does not start to rot and get mouldy after packaging.






Step 7 - Grading and bagging - different grades of tea are separated out and put into large bags.







Step 8 - Finished tea - This factory produces three different lines of tea; the lower end ones in burlap and non-woven fabric bags are for domestic consumption, while the highest grade goes into paper bags for the export market. All tea is sold at auction.

[Shadowman]

Nicely documented.

[FrankMi]

Very well done! Far more interesting with the commentary than if it were simply pictures of the process. Excellent!

[Mike Buckley]

You must have really enjoyed making those photos. I'm jealous!

[Manfred M]

You must have really enjoyed making those photos. I'm jealous!

And I really enjoy the tea we bought there too.

[IzzieK]

Very nice documentary. I hope you did not only took photographs but also video of the tea production...with audio too.

[bnnrcn]

Thanks for sharing, very nice and informative

[rpcrowe]

Great images. I love shots of working factories...

[John 2]

Really interesting and a good set of supporting images. One thing I have always wondered about is that I can understand the concept grading the tea but in general, the best teas contain only the "tips". How do they separate them?

[Rebel]

I love a good cup of tea, never even thought about how it was processed!

Thanks for that, interesting reading/viewing.

[Manfred M]

Really interesting and a good set of supporting images. One thing I have always wondered about is that I can understand the concept grading the tea but in general, the best teas contain only the "tips". How do they separate them?

John - just an educated guess here; but I suspect that size and weight are likely the determining factor. The processing belt was totally automated and there were shaker table type stations along the way. The different stations definitely seemed to output different grades of tea.

There is a second part of the process, not in the images where the tea from these stations seems to go into something I suspect is a cyclone separator; the different grades are marked on the storage columns along the machine, but I did not get a picture of that.