According to a report by Dongxing Securities, driven by growing health awareness among Chinese consumers, retail sales of unsweetened tea beverages in China have grown rapidly, reaching 4.1 billion yuan in 2019 with a CAGR of 32.6% from 2014 to 2019, far exceeding the overall growth rate of tea beverages. It is expected to maintain over 20% growth from 2019 to 2024, with sales reaching 11.5 billion yuan by 2024, accounting for 12% of the market.

On March 31, ahead of the Qingming Festival, Nongfu Spring's ready-to-drink tea brand Oriental Leaf launched its first spring limited edition product in 11 years—Longjing New Tea.

Unlike other flavors, the time-sensitive nature and tea-making difficulty of Longjing tea forced Oriental Leaf to race against time. From picking in the tea garden to completing bottling, the newly launched Longjing product took only 5 days. This timeframe has once again set a new production standard for ready-to-drink tea in China.

Racing Against Time: Turning Premium Longjing into a Bottled Beverage

Oriental Leaf may have experienced its most challenging product launch. For a long time, turning green tea, known for its freshness, into a beverage has been a recognized industry challenge, especially for Longjing. The issue lies in "time." Longjing tea has high requirements for picking and processing time. Picking emphasizes early morning, tenderness, and frequency, while preserving the delicate fresh leaves. Longjing picked around Qingming is especially mellow in taste and beautiful in shape, with tender buds and leaves.

During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, there were records stating, "Among all teas in Hangzhou, none surpass Longjing, and the fine buds before the rain, picked as one flag and one spear, are especially treasured."

At the inception of the Oriental Leaf brand, the Longjing flavor was considered. However, the freshness of Longjing tea makes it more demanding on tea-making technology than other teas. A team member who has been involved in R&D since 2011 recalled that the technology at the time could not perfect the Longjing flavor, so the idea was temporarily shelved. Since then, Oriental Leaf's "Longjing complex" has never been abandoned. Over the past decade, the R&D team has focused on tea extraction and aroma preservation technology. After years of process refinement and spring tea testing, by 2021, the Oriental Leaf team "finally felt they had gotten the hang of it," finding the appropriate tea-to-water ratio and learning how to control water temperature and time to extract the unique aroma, color, and taste of Longjing tea.

In 2022, Oriental Leaf was confident to launch the new Longjing product, preparing a limited quantity of seasonal edition before Qingming. It is reported that all the tea leaves used in Oriental Leaf Longjing New Tea come from geographical indication production areas, using one bud and one leaf, with about 30,000 buds needed to fry into 1 jin of Longjing tea. The tea leaves were picked in two batches around Qingming, with the first batch picked on March 27 and 28, followed by refining, and production and shipment on March 31. From tea garden to bottling, the entire process took only 5 days. In the history of Chinese ready-to-drink tea, there has almost never been a precedent for using premium Longjing new tea in modern industrial production. This time, Oriental Leaf, representing China's unsweetened ready-to-drink tea, has completed a challenge to itself.

Eleven Years of Tea-Making Raises the Industry Bar, Leading China's Ready-to-Drink Tea Forward

If tea extraction and aroma preservation were the turning point for Longjing tea's breakthrough, then Oriental Leaf's 11 years of accumulated aseptic technology and antioxidant technology are the fundamental guarantee for all innovation, making industrial production of Longjing tea possible.

In 2011, Oriental Leaf first built a Log6 aseptic production line. Log6 is a standard for microbial control, meaning that in producing 1 million bottles, no more than 1 bottle will be contaminated by microorganisms. Even today, most domestic beverage production lines can only achieve the Log5 standard.

It is the investment in the Log6 aseptic production line that enables Oriental Leaf to achieve "0 preservatives." Combined with 0 sugar, 0 calories, 0 fat, and 0 flavorings, Oriental Leaf has created the "five zeros era" for ready-to-drink tea, liberating tea beverages from "sweetness and greasiness" and returning to the original Chinese tea taste. Also safeguarding is the antioxidant process, which is a difficulty for neutral beverages (tea) that are prone to oxidation. The industry's usual approach is to use full-label packaging, both to block the effect of ultraviolet rays on the tea and to cover the appearance changes caused by tea soup discoloration.

Oriental Leaf hopes consumers can see the clear tea soup and preserve the ritual of tea tasting. After hundreds of experiments, Oriental Leaf overcame this challenge in 2011, developing a unique transparent bottle antioxidant technology. In 2011, this transparent packaging became a unique presence in beverages.

Looking closely, the outer packaging of the 2022 Longjing New Tea continues Oriental Leaf's consistent aesthetic philosophy. The crystal-clear bottle and minimalist packaging feature willow branches and swallows representing spring. In early spring, when willow branches sprout and swallows dart through the spring breeze, "the dark bird arrives, and the willows turn new," the imagery complements the Longjing New Tea perfectly. Over time, Oriental Leaf's five-zero clean ingredient list, restoration of Chinese tea and its aesthetic philosophy have not only influenced consumer choices but also driven and inspired the development of China's ready-to-drink tea industry.

According to the latest data from Nielsen, China's unsweetened tea market achieved explosive growth of about 68% in the past year, with more new brands following suit, jointly driving the return of Chinese tea culture among young people.

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