Tea in Turbulent Times
How the Industry is Rewriting the Rules of Global Trade
By Dan Bolton
At the Global Dubai Tea Forum 2025, industry leaders and experts discussed how changing trade alliances, increasing tariffs, and geopolitical instability are transforming global tea markets — and how collaboration, innovation, and flexibility might shape the future.
Opening Context: A Forum for Uncertain Times
Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman and CEO of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), welcomed attendees by reaffirming Dubai’s role as a neutral trading hub—a crossroads where East meets West and commerce meets collaboration.
“Dubai has always thrived by adapting,” Bin Sulayem said. “Our task now is to help the global tea community do the same.”
“Trade isn’t entirely about goods. It’s about people, about bridging walls,” he said.
The 9th Edition of the Global Dubai Tea Forum (GDTF) attracted 150 delegates to the Ritz-Carlton Conference Center, where policymakers, producers, traders, and economists addressed questions that few industries can avoid: How can tea stay competitive in a world of tariffs, shifting alliances, and climate volatility?
Feryal Ahmadi, DMCC’s Chief Operating Officer, presented a vivid preview of the Special Tea Edition of The Future of Trade, the fourth in the Agri Commodities Series of bound 45-page reports.
The report, which contains current statistics and key recommendations, is free to download.
Ahmadi said that forums like this one succeed only when dialogue becomes action. “Trade turbulence,” she said, “is not a passing storm — it’s the new climate. Our resilience depends on how fast we innovate.”
Fragmentation or Realignment?
Economist Impact’s Melanie Noronha anchored the day’s first keynote in a global context. “Fragmentation,” she told the audience, “Is not disorder — it’s adaptation.”
Her presentation mapped a world moving from a single, rules-based trading system toward multiple, overlapping centers of influence. The same pattern that defines geopolitics, she argued, now shapes global supply chains.
In the years since the pandemic, regional trade blocs have strengthened even as the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) authority wanes. Cross-border digital services are expanding faster than physical goods trade, yet supply chains remain vulnerable to freight disruptions and sanctions.
Noronha’s data-driven slides showed how tariff asymmetry — sudden, unreciprocated increases on essential commodities — has distorted once-stable flows. “What we’re seeing,” she said, “is not deglobalization but diversification. Trade is moving from concentration to constellation.”
For the tea industry, this new reality demands agility: understanding where growth will come from, where tariffs will bite deepest, and how sustainability standards will increasingly dictate market access.
New Forum Structure
In his opening remarks, Tea Biz Publisher Dan Bolton said, “From the marketplaces of Athens to the Roman Forum, progress begins when industries confront uncertainty together.” That ancient spirit of open dialogue framed the biennial event convened under the theme “TEA AT THE CROSSROADS, Trade, Tariffs and Technology is an Age of Realignment.
Organizers identified 11 significant challenges, narrowed the topics to 4, and developed four problem statements that defined the panelists’ work.
Each of the 21 speakers contributed unique insights, drawing on experience to illuminate practical solutions. “Each takeaway points toward a solution that strengthens tea’s resilience,” according to Bolton.
“We are here because turbulence has arrived — and because clarity and cooperation are now our most valuable commodities,” he said.
India’s Balancing Act
Against that backdrop, Sanjay Sethi, CEO and Tea Consultant at Gundlach Packaging DMCC, outlined a pragmatic response. “Our focus,” he said, “must be on resilience — in production, in policy, and in partnerships.”
India, which accounts for more than 20% of global tea output, faces what Sethi called a “dual imperative”: ensuring income stability for its 1.2 million smallholders while expanding exports into high-value segments.
His presentation stressed traceability and quality assurance as key levers. A digital traceability system launched by the Tea Board is being integrated with customs platforms to speed exports and verify the authenticity of origins. Sethi also urged collaboration among producing nations to prevent undercutting in bulk markets.
“We must move beyond competition by price,” he said. “Value addition and market differentiation are the only sustainable answers.”
The Numbers Behind the Turbulence
If Sethi brought policy realism, James Suranga Perera of the International Tea Committee (ITC) supplied the data to back it up.
For the first time in history, Perera reported, global tea production exceeded seven billion kilograms in 2024 — yet consumption growth is slowing. “There is no shortage of tea,” he told delegates. “But there is a shortage of value.”
His charts illustrated a familiar paradox: while auction prices remain under pressure from oversupply, retail shelves are seeing record prices for premium and branded teas. The disconnect, he said, exposes a structural imbalance between producers and retailers.
Perera called for greater transparency in trade statistics, harmonized reporting between producing nations, and deeper investment in consumption analytics. “We measure what we make,” he quipped, “but not enough of what we drink.”
Supply Chains Under Pressure
The logistics view came from Sherring Thekekkara, Global Executive Vice President for Market Access and Global Logistics at DP World, who brought the discussion from policy to portside reality.
Rerouting vessels away from the Red Sea and through the Cape of Good Hope, she said, has added as much as two weeks to transit times and increased freight costs by double digits. For tea — a commodity that travels vast distances from farm to cup — these delays ripple across the entire chain.
“Digitization isn’t optional,” Thekekkara said. “It’s the bridge between volatility and visibility.”
Her presentation emphasized three imperatives: data integration across ports, smarter warehousing near consumption hubs, and investment in resilient logistics corridors.
“The most competitive supply chains of the future,” she said, “will be those that can see trouble before it arrives.”
Her call for predictive logistics resonated with traders facing record insurance premiums and the need to reroute shipments through longer maritime routes.
China’s Adaptive Strategy
No discussion of trade turbulence would be complete without China, whose transformation from bulk exporter to brand powerhouse is reshaping global tea dynamics.
Mao Limin, founder of Tea Doctor and former CEO of Zhejiang Tea Group, delivered perhaps the most striking case study: the rise of commercial matcha.
Mao traced how China leveraged its experience in powdered tea production to meet booming global demand, once dominated by Japan. “When matcha’s popularity surged, Japan couldn’t scale,” he explained. “China could — and did.”
His slides documented a five-year surge in tencha cultivation and matcha exports. “This is how globalization evolves,” Mao said. “Not by abandoning tradition, but by reinterpreting it for new markets.”
He urged producing nations to invest in innovation infrastructure: R&D, product formulation labs, and partnerships with health and wellness sectors. “The future of tea is not just agriculture,” he said. “It’s manufacturing, branding, and lifestyle.”
A Trader’s View from the Front Lines
If Mao offered the manufacturer’s perspective, Mohit Agarwal, Director at Asian Tea Group, presented a reality check for traders.
“Tariffs are the new weather,” he told the audience. “They change without warning — and we all must adjust.”
Agarwal described how traders are developing tariff mitigation strategies through re-blending, trans-shipment, and regional value-addition zones. Dubai, he noted, plays a pivotal role as a bonded hub where teas from multiple origins can be blended, packed, and re-exported under preferential terms.
His presentation showed how adaptive blending and intelligent procurement can maintain competitiveness even when tariff walls rise. “You can’t fight tariffs,” he said. “You have to route around them.”
He also emphasized sustainability as a commercial necessity. “Buyers aren’t just asking where the tea comes from,” Agarwal said. “They’re asking what it stands for.”
A Call for Collective Action
After nearly two hours of discussion, Dan Bolton returned to the stage to weave the threads together. The turbulence, he said, is undeniable — but it also presents a chance for reinvention.
“Trade turbulence tests more than supply chains,” he said. “It tests relationships.”
Bolton proposed what he called a Global Tea Alliance, a coalition of the willing linking regulatory bodies, trade associations, research institutes, and ethical certification groups seated around a table supported by the United Nations Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG-Tea).
“The architecture already exists,” he noted, explaining there is no need to create another bureaucracy. “We have tea boards, brokers’ associations, research centers, and sustainability organizations. What’s missing is alignment.
The proposed alliance would coordinate standards on traceability, data exchange, and environmental stewardship while amplifying tea’s collective voice in global trade forums.
Bolton concluded:
“The tea industry cannot control tariffs or geopolitics. But it can control trust. That’s the foundation of every trade order, old or new.”
Key Takeaways
- Trade turbulence is the new normal— adaptability will define competitiveness.
• Minilateral alliances are replacing outdated multilateral frameworks.
• Logistics, data, and traceability are strategic assets, not administrative costs.
• Value addition, not volume, is the route to resilience.
• Collaboration across institutions — from tea boards to research centers — is essential to sustain relevance and profitability.
BIZ INSIGHT
From Turbulence to Trust
“In trade, especially through the volatility of past centuries, one truth stands out: the need for certainty, the need for predictability, and the need for dependability. That is what the UAE, Dubai, and the DMCC Tea Center offer, observes Ahmed Bin Sulayem, “when you look at the rich tapestry of history, tea is still uniting us, as traders, as nations, and as people.”
As delegates departed the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, this theme echoed in every corridor conversation: the need for a united tea voice in a divided world.
The turbulence is not a passing storm — it’s the climate we must learn to navigate.
The Global Dubai Tea Forum 2025 did more than diagnose an industry’s challenges. It offered a blueprint — from data to dialogue, from policy to partnership — for how tea can turn its most volatile era into one of renewal.
