By Helen Xu Fei

Anhui Guorun Tea Industrial Co. Ltd. is China’s leading producer of Keemun tea, a renowned Chinese black that isfound in many famous blends such as English Breakfast Tea or packed unmixed as a specialty tea. The Chizhou-based company was established in 1950 as Anhui Guichi Tea Factory, a Keemun producer under the state-owned China Tea Co. South Anhui Branch.

"Guichi was the first Keemun tea factory built after the Liberation," said Yin Tianji, president of Guorun, in a telephone interview to Tea & Coffee Asia last March. "The construction took about a year, and we started production in 1951. "During the command economy period, most of our Keemun tea was supplied to Shanghai Tea Imp/Exp Co., one of the biggest state-owned tea exporters."

 In China, bulk orthodox tea production is separated into two stages: the production of maocha (crude tea) and jingzhicha (refined tea). Maocha is considered as semi-finished goods which can be traded as raw materials for tea refineries. In the maocha stage, fresh leaves are processed into crude tea to extend the storage life.

Jingzhicha is defined as finished goods. During this stage, crude tea with uneven shapes, varied moisture content, and from different origins were refined into standardized products. The production of refined tea is rather complicated in that it involves a series of processes, such as drying, cutting, rolling, sorting and blending. Generally speaking, if a refinery is larger and equipped with more machineries, its work flow is far more comprehensive than that of a crude tea factory. Guichi tea factory was planned as a supplier for the export market, thus all the maocha and refinery infrastructure and functions were incorporated into one factory.

Until 1983, Guichi and two other Keemun factories virtually monopolized the whole country’s Keemun (finished goods) production. The situation changed in 1984, when China started its economic reform. The centralized monopoly policy on tea trading was chipped, signaled by handing over black tea exportation rights to provincial level governments. As one of the major tea producing provinces, Anhui was bullish about its black tea exports, and after evaluating the province’s leading tea factories, Guichi was appointed as the official provincial refinery for Anhui export black tea. In the two decades following its appointment, Guichi duly performed this role and has maintained a steady annual output of around 6,000 tons black tea.

The same two decades witnessed the full opening up of China’s tea trade, turbulent competition in the private section and the adoption of the free market system by the industry.

"State-owned tea companies gradually lost market share to the private section, among the three dominating Keemun tea factories, Guichi was the only survivor in the free market economy," said Yin, becoming rather nostalgic about the closure of the other two Keemun factories. "As the tea industry became a freely-competing industry, Guichi management considered privatization to better survive the kinetic environment."

Guichi was privatized in 2003, and renamed Guorun Tea Industrial Co. Ltd. Since then, the company has assumed a more proactive role in sales, environmental protection, and new product development.

"Guorun has been a leader in Keemun production, yet we did not have our own international sales team as our products were mainly supplied to Chinese exporters," Yin told us. "In 2005, Guorun applied for and was granted import and export trading right from the authorities and transformed from a pure producer to both a producer and exporter. In recent years, our major export markets have expanded to include the US, Europe, Russia and Japan. We also started to test the water in the African market and to promote gourmet Keemun to specialty tea lovers globally. Even the recent economic crisis did not affect our exports."

Yin elaborated on Guorun’s quality and safety measures.

"Since our founding day, we have kept a proud record of zero complaints on pesticides residue issue from overseas clients," he said. "Guorun has implemented many proactive measures to solve potential quality hazards. For instance, pesticide inspections on each batch of raw materials before release to warehouse or workshop and real-time quality assurance conducted by shop floor inspectors to eliminate production errors. Early in 2000, after the EU revised its maximum pesticide residue regulation, we initiated the first tea cooperative in Anhui to curb quality and safety problems at the source. We trained these cooperative planters to master IMP [integrated pest management] practices, which not only helped them to meet the tightened pesticide regulations but also reduced their production cost by cutting off unnecessary expenditure on pesticide."

To date, Guorun has developed more than a dozen such cooperatives and the regular training programs have extended to topics such as GAP (good agriculture practice) and IMO. Planters are rewarded for participating and conformity through Guorun’s profit-sharing scheme.

The ISO9001, HACCP and GAP certified company is a firm believer in sustainable agriculture and eco-production. It is in charge of the 2,500 hectare ‘China Keemun Black Tea Safety Production Model Estate’ program and is actively promoting organic cultivation on its tea estates. Among its exiting organic estates, 160ha of high-grown gardens are IMO certified.

"Besides promoting organic tea, we also concerned about energy savings and environmental protection," Yin said. "This year we plan to sponsor our university partner for a joint research on how to utilize solar energy in the process of tea drying. If solar energy could be successfully used in this part of tea production to replace fuel or electricity, it would effectively reduce carbon dioxides emission, and this green energy is renewable."

While strengthening its advantage in Keemun black tea production, Guorun also extended its product categories to cater to new demands in both overseas and domestic markets. In China, tea consumption has risen significantly since the late 1980s, especially in the gourmet tea and RTD tea sections, while in the international market, though black tea remains the dominaant category, green and specialty tea consumption has increased more rapidly. In response to these trends, Guorun enriched its product portfolio by adding green tea, jasmine tea, oolong tea, flavored tea and tea powder. It even includes a rare specialty yellow tea in its product line.

"We’ve specially developed gourmet black and gourmet green for the domestic market., " confided Yin. "One of our niche Keemun teas, the Runsi Fairy Needle, had been selected by the China Tea Museum to be a part of its collection in 2007, and our gourmet green series consists of some famous Anhui teas, such as Jiuhua Buddha tea, Huangshan Maofeng and Taiping Houkui."

Yin was enthusiastic when talking about these new products.

"For first-time tea drinkers or those who wants more flavor choices, we developed flavored blends such as jasmine black tea, ginger tea and blossom tea, etc," he enthused. "We also create customized blends for big clients, and produce fine powders for the F&B industry."

Unlike the international market, black tea consumption is quite marginal in China. In recent years, specialty black tea such as Keemun, Lapsang souchong, Darjeeling and Ceylon tea started to be introduced to Chinese drinkers. Guorun, with its expertise and rich experiences in black tea, initiates cultural and technical trainings on black tea to domestic clients.

"China is a promising market for black tea," Yin believes. " In the past, Chinese tea drinkers didn’t have too much opportunity to taste quality black tea, but once they try our Keemun, they are charmed by its unique character and so correct any biased judgment they might have had previously about black tea."

Helen Xu Fei is a China tea specialist and a member of Shanghai Tea Institute. She is a tea consultant based in Singapore. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , website: aboltea.com