Tea market data
Next to water, tea (Camellia sinensis) is the most widely consumed beverage in the world.
As tea is not commercially grown in the EU – apart from one garden in Cornwall, UK – all tea originates from third countries. In 2018, a total of 228,869.10 t of tea were imported into the EU (EU-28), breaking down to 14.15% green tea (32,384.4 t) and 85.85 % black tea (196,484.7 t). 82.47 % of the total tea imports were supplied to those EU Member States, whose national tea and/or herbal infusions associations hold membership in Tea & Herbal Infusions Europe.
Please find a survey of the sales figures for the past years below. All values are stated in tons.
| 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 2,667 | 2,342 | 2,146 | 2,605 | 2,300 | 2,380 | 1,409 |
| Denmark | 1,516 | 1,668 | 1,835 | 2,272 | 2,000 | 2,715 | 4,064 |
| France | 13,012 | 14,833 | 12,176 | 13,990 | 15,044 | 14,250 | 14,114 |
| Germany *) | 19,176 | 19,376 | 19,220 | 19,066 | 18,074 | 19,194 | 19,523 |
| Ireland | 7,834 | 7,341 | 7,910 | 8,794 | 9,281 | 11,204 | 10,642 |
| Italy | 6,143 | 6,826 | 6,557 | 8,011 | 8,200 | 5,301 | 6,583 |
| Netherlands | 7,910 | 8,136 | 7,972 | 8,200 | 8,400 | 9,197 | 9,494 |
| Slovakia | 690 | 651 | 582 | 476 | 550 | 537 | 444 |
| Switzerland | 1,627 | 1,791 | 1,579 | 1,796 | 1,825 | 2,420 | 2,182 |
| United Kingdom | 106,340 | 114,897 | 107,233 | 108,341 | 107,862 | 104,141 | 110,788 |
*) figures as per Annual Bulletin by the German Tea & Herbal Infusions Association
Data kindly provided by: International Tea Committee (ITC) – Detailed market data is compiled by ITC, which offers commercial services on statistics (http://www.inttea.com/)