By Jane Pettigrew

Most tea companies decide at some point in their history that they need to pack some of their teas into teabags. But who chooses what and why? We discuss what’s available and how different shapes and styles appeal to different markets.

Given that the teabag is said to have been invented by accident some time during the first decade of the 20th century by Thomas Sullivan, that serendipitous quirk of history was obviously destined to happen at some point anyway since the teabag now dominates the market all around the world and someone would have come up with the idea sooner or later. But, whereas Sullivan’s little pouches were beautifully made of silk and carefully hand-tied to offer customers a stylish and attractive sample of quality teas, the majority of tea bags available today are dull pieces of paper gummed or stapled around cheap grades that often deliver poor color, thin flavor and little strength. Perhaps Sullivan may be turning in his grave at the direction his accidental invention has taken over the past 100 years!
Dedicated tea lovers rail against the teabag, criticizing it for its lack of style and elegance, for the fact that no-one can see the tea that goes inside and because the CTC or broken leaf is often selected and blended for price rather than for decent character and quality. But we must recognize that the vast majority of tea drinkers rely totally on teabags to brew every single cup of tea that they drink, and without the teabag, the tea industry may well have collapsed decades ago. In the UK, approximately 96% of tea is brewed using a teabag; in the US, it’s 98%; in Saudi Arabia, teabags account for roughly 75% of tea consumed; and Russia’s use of teabags has increased with its growth in wealth to approximately 12%. Almost everywhere you go, teabags account for a large proportion of consumed tea.

Considerations of shape and style
But the shape, production process, material used and presentation vary hugely and tea companies must choose what they feel will meet the needs of different sectors of the consuming public. Should they choose a single chamber paper bag with string and tag, or double chamber with string and tag, or a square, round or rectangular paper cushion? Or pyramid paper without string and tag? Or is cotton muslin a better option – hand stitched or machine made? Is the latest gauze pyramid what people love? And should it be made in non-biodegradable nylon or in silk or corn starch ‘soilon’? Should the bag be stapled or glued or sealed by ultrasound? Should your tea perhaps be packed inside a long, narrow, perforated foil ‘tea stick’ that follows the latest trend for packing everything – milk, honey, tea, etc – in a tube? Or do customers want to feed a little compact pod, rather like a coffee pod, into a fast-brewing tea machine?
La Piccola tells potential customers that “Pods produce an infusion far superior to that of any teabag; the result is magnificent! You can obtain a fantastic tea at the right temperature full of deep flavors from an extraction you never thought possible.” Perforated foil tube Tstix are billed as “the new-fashioned way to enjoy tea. It’s a twist on an old favorite. Tstix is the new, stylish way to make the perfect cup of tea!”
But are these new formats really going to deliver better tea or are they simply the latest fad?
A number of questions are thrown up by the different options of shape and style. Does the bag allow the tea to brew properly? Do tea drinkers want metal staples in their teabags? Does the paper and glue interfere with the taste of the tea? Does the bag cost too much – to make and to buy? Is it easy to brew and easy to lift out of the cup or pot? How easy is it to keep the bags fresh? Are the bags attractive enough for a smart food service operation, and so on?

What the market demands
The relatively new Tstix machinery can produce 1,200 tubes of tea per minute, depending on the number of lanes running, while tea pod machines pack at a rate of 400 capsules per minute. Perhaps these less traditional bags and tubes and pods meet a demand in the mass market among people who do not really understand tea but simply want a cup or mug of something hot and wet!
For an acceptable quality bag that delivers a reasonable or good cup of tea into the mass market, the big packers and blenders tend to offer traditional string and tag, single- or double-chamber bags. The various machines that pack them, although expensive, make the job easy, efficient and highly productive, and bags are churned out at low cost at the rate of 150 or more per minute, then are counted into neat stacks to go into catering cartons. Machines that manufacture tagless and stringless bags turn them out at a rate of between 800 and 1,800 per minute. Fast, cheap and, it seems, what certain customers want.
Tea companies who wish to offer teabags are not always presented with a wide selection of options. They may for example, have to outsource some of their tea bagging operations to contract packers and are therefore dependent on whatever machinery is already in place. They often therefore find themselves obliged to choose the predictable, traditional string and tag format until or unless they can afford to buy a machine of their own choosing and pack the bags they prefer.
The better quality catering bags are now usually overwrapped in foil or some other air-tight material in order to protect the bag from humidity and pollutants. The envelope also acts as a perfect vehicle for conveying the brand name. The formula can work well but the quality of the cup of tea depends, of course, on the quality of the tea inside, as Matthew Davies, senior international sales manager for Taylors of Harrogate explains.
“For use in hotels, these offer quality presentation in conference rooms, bars and private rooms, and they keep the tea fresh and dry. But for us the most important factor is quality! We place the emphasis on delivering a really good cup of tea and so we put extra tea into the bag. Whereas many companies put only 2 or 2.2 grams into their bags, we put 2.5 grams of quality tea into ours. And although we recognize that some companies use the pyramid gauze because it looks lovely, we concentrate less on the ‘look’ and more on the quality.”

The pyramid gauze bag
A few years ago, the first transparent, pyramid bags appeared and caused quite a stir, for, although we had all seen the pyramid before, it had never been made in a material that allowed the customer to see the leaves inside. Many of the specialty tea companies now prefer this format.
At Adagio, Charles Cain explained that: “we put 100% of our loose tea collection (210 teas) into pyramid bags. At its heart, Adagio is a loose tea company, but we believe that one of the best ways to grow the market is to first introduce the casual customer to better tea through tea bags. We are much more likely to get someone to try loose leaf tea if they have an incredible tea experience. We begin by speaking their language and earning their trust. Then we try to convince them to switch to loose tea.”
In London, Nick Gandon of Reginald Ames bought a new Fuso pyramid bag machine to pack his clients’ teas because: “the market is taking a strong turn towards this type of product and we want to be at the cutting edge of the market. The pyramid bag looks great and combines the essence of high quality loose leaf tea with the ease of the teabag – a prefect recipe! These fantastic quality products promote quality tea and are exactly what the industry needs! There are always fads in every industry, tea included, but the pyramid is far more than that. It’s here to stay and it will grow fantastically.”
Chamong Tee Exports of India packs several different types of bag – round pot bags without string and tag and double-chamber bags with string and tag, and will soon also be using the new IMA C28 which has been developed for growing markets to deliver a high quality ecological double chamber bag for catering packs and cartons. But, says Chamong’s marketing director, Ajay Kichlu, “the newer trend in the specialty market is, of course, the pyramid bags which give better liquor because of the fact that they use larger leaf. It is, of course, also staple-free and glue-free. We bought our Fuso machine as this is what we foresee for the future of the tea bag market.”

Other formats
Other options do exist, some serious and some designed as an eye-catching gift product.
Donkey Products have obviously had a lot of fun designing its Tea-Party teabags. Hand-made in Germany, it packs tea inside cut-outs of a range of famous personalities including the British royal family, international footballers, politicians and world leaders, rock stars, animals and film characters such as Charlie Chaplin. The teas or infusions inside can be customized to suit the market and each teabag is designed to lie inside a cup of hot water so that the particular character appears to be taking a bath in the tea!
On a more serious note, some tea companies prefer to have the Fuso machine (used to make the pyramid bag) pack their teas in rectangular gauze cushions rather than in the more popular pyramids. Others prefer hand sewn muslin, silk or nylon. Mariage Freres and Palais des Thés in France offer a selection of their products in pretty, hand-tied, muslin pouches. And Kristiane Blomqvist of Emeyu, based in Denmark and the UK, introduced a range of muslin bags because: “we were asked to by a hotel chain that loved our loose leaf teas and design. Our aim when introducing the teabag was to stay as close to the loose leaf tea experience and ritual as possible. We find that customers are looking for good design, quality and environmentally-friendly tea experiences, so we wanted to create the perfect teabag – one that is convenient and beautiful and gives the drinker a truly sensory experience equal to drinking loose leaf teas. And our bag had to be environmentally friendly to support our focus on organic teas so, after months of rigorous testing and research, we settled on the cotton muslin bag which is biodegradable, tactile and has the perfect mesh for releasing the flavor of the tea.”

The right packers
But finding the right packers for this type of bag is not always easy. Hand or sewing machine manufacture is expensive and not nearly as available as traditional machinery packers.
“Only a few companies pack the muslin bags we use. We chose our particular packers because they are reliable, efficient, innovative and, not least, socially aware,” Kristiane explains. “Their factory is Fairtrade and does a number of good things for their workers. We partner very closely with them when considering new projects and they are very progressive in suggesting new shapes and materials.”
Teabags are like any commodity – different markets demand different styles, qualities and experiences. If you choose to put low-grade teas inside a cheaply-produced bag, the tea will probably not be worth drinking. But still people buy them. If you pack a high quality tea inside a suitably-shaped bag made of carefully-chosen material and with a clear understanding of what people expect from a good cup of tea, then the experience of brewing tea using a teabag is more likely to be a happy and satisfying one. And that may encourage those customers to also buy loose tea from time to time.