Meitan County, the "Hometown of China's Famous Tea", Shiqian County, the "Hometown of China's Mosaic Tea", Pu'an County, the "Hometown of China's Ancient Tea Trees", Fenggang County, the "Hometown of China's Zinc and Selenium Rich Organic Tea", Duyun City, the "Maojian Tea City of China"... The tea towns and tea cities all over Guizhou and Guizhou have witnessed the long history of tea production in Guizhou. In the spring tea picking season, Wumeng Mountain, Wuling Mountain, Leigong Mountain, Moon Mountain and Dalou Mountain are full of tea farmers and tea fragrance curls. Guizhou tea garden covers an area of more than 6 million mu for consecutive years, and its scale has always been in the first square of China's tea industry.
The reporter of Economic Information Daily went deep into the investigation of tea farmers, tea enterprises, tea management departments, tea research institutions, etc., and found that although the tea industry in Guizhou has grown in size and size, there is still a gap between the goal of "having a brand and stepping up the ladder", and the transition from "a large tea province" to "a strong tea province" still needs to climb the slope and overcome the obstacles. It is urgent to improve brand efficiency and market share.
Varieties and brands are not popular
"More tea is sold, less tea is bought. Although the quality of tea in Guizhou is good, many people in the market do not know the local brand, and there are not many deals actually." After attending a tea industry exposition, a person in charge of a white tea enterprise in Guizhou became more worried about the development of the tea industry in Guizhou.
According to the statistics of authoritative departments, at present, there are about 5700 tea enterprises (cooperatives) in Guizhou Province, including 12 national leading enterprises (ranking second in the country), 230 provincial leading enterprises and 179 enterprises above the designated size. Some of them are well-known international and domestic enterprises. At the same time, Guizhou has also cultivated a number of industrial consortia, and the main business of the tea industry is growing. At present, Guizhou tea industry has more than 2200 registered trademarks.
The reporter found that Guizhou has a variety of tea varieties, including Zunyi Red Tea, Pu'an Red Tea, Meitan Cuiya Tea, Leigong Mountain Silver Ball Tea... In recent years, Guizhou has proposed to build five major industrial belts, namely, famous green tea in central Guizhou, high-quality green tea in eastern Guizhou, green tea in northern Guizhou, organic green tea in northwestern Guizhou, and ancient tree tea in southwestern Guizhou.
"There are a lot of dazzling varieties, but when you go out to promote them, you feel that you have no confidence because the brand is not loud enough." A boss with more than 20 years of experience in the tea industry said that one of the key points to summarize the "big but not strong" tea industry in Guizhou is that the variety is diverse and the brand is not famous.
According to the data of China Tea Circulation Association, in 2023, there will be 226 enterprises with "brand strength" of more than 500 for "green tea, green tea (Oolong tea), black tea, black tea, white tea, yellow tea, Pu'er tea, scented tea and substitute tea". Among the 13 tea enterprises, 5 or more tea products have a "brand strength" of more than 500, and there are no Guizhou tea enterprises.
Several leaders of tea enterprises believe that Guizhou tea enterprises are dominated by family workshops and cooperatives, which seem to be large in scale, but actually do not form a scale effect, and it is difficult to produce influential brands due to their respective formation. Taking the regional public brand of a large tea producing county in western Guizhou as an example, although there are about 200 tea market players in this county at present, only about 1/10 of them are authorized to use this brand, which makes it difficult to form scale effect, low popularity, low market share, and not giving full play to the brand value.
Wang Fei, the provincial inheritor of intangible cultural heritage of hand-made Shiqian moss tea in Guizhou, believes that, on the one hand, enterprises should be encouraged to create their own brands, on the other hand, the integration of major regional public brands should be vigorously promoted to truly form a large-scale and famous label brand. Only by creating a strong brand, can enterprises and products be attracted with a strong brand effect.
High quality, low output value
Guizhou is a tea area with high altitude, low latitude, few sunshine, many clouds, and many other conditions suitable for tea planting and tea making. It is recognized as an important origin of high-quality green tea in the industry. Meitan County, located at 27 degrees north latitude, has been ranked the top of China's top 100 tea counties for many years in a row, and is located in the world's three gold tea producing belts with India's Darjeeling and Fujian's Wuyi Mountain.
"The tea from several major tea producing areas in Guizhou, including Meitan tea, has good quality, and many can be said to be high-end tea," the chairman of a tea company in Guizhou told reporters. At the same time, however, due to the influence of management, picking, processing and other factors, Guizhou's tea generally has low per unit yield and low output value, which makes high-quality tea not turn into high output value.
The first tea industry researchers found that the average per mu yield of tea in Guizhou is about 53 kg/mu, with an average of 135 yuan/kg, which is lower than the national average.
The reporter went deep into the tea enterprises and found that due to the high altitude and mountainous terrain in Guizhou, tea planting, picking, management and other aspects are almost not mechanized, most of them are manual, and the production efficiency is low. Every spring tea picking season, a tea owner in Anshun City will go to Sichuan and other places to recruit tea pickers. For more than a month, there are hundreds of people in the tea garden every day, and a large number of workers need to eat and shelter. The person in charge of the enterprise told the reporter that the annual output value was more than 10 million yuan, and the wages paid to workers would be millions more.
In Guizhou, the main body of tea industry is relatively scattered, and it is difficult to implement efficient, large-scale and intensive production. The heads of many tea enterprises said frankly that tea gardens need to invest a lot of labor every year, but with the aging of rural areas and the loss of young labor, as well as the rising labor costs, the problem will become more and more prominent.
"The price can't be sold at present. There is some overcapacity. The quality of our company's Mingqian tea is very good, and now the price of package mail is less than 200 yuan/jin." The chairman of a tea company in Guizhou said frankly that "the profit is too thin", and it is impossible not to sell it. First, the quality can't be maintained, and second, the price is lower as we drag on.
Powerful front end and weak rear end
The reporter found that Guizhou attaches great importance to planting, management and protection during the development of the tea industry, but in marketing, brand image building and other aspects, it still needs to get through the "last mile" to the market.
"I met a very good white tea enterprise with a large scale and good quality before, but unfortunately, the way the boss sells tea is mainly to send friends." A person from the tea management department said that later he followed the advice of professionals and established a special marketing team. Now he has no worries about sales.
Brand image building is also an urgent problem for Guizhou tea industry. When the reporter interviewed a tea company, he heard a real case on the spot: the boss used ordinary paper to design the product packaging in order to save costs. It only wrote the name of the tea, the boss's name, and the contact number. It was such a simple packaging. A kilogram of tea would cost 1100 yuan. It had an output value of more than 100000 yuan that year, but only sold 20000 yuan to 30000 yuan in the end. People in the industry generally believe that the development of Guizhou tea industry must be renewed at the back end, so that high quality can truly achieve high output value.
Pan Ke, deputy director of the Tea Research Institute of Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and others believe that many tea enterprises in Guizhou have created brands in terms of brand image building, but they are still at the stage of only one "name". The next step needs careful design and creation. In addition, it is also necessary to increase the cultivation of more highly skilled practical technical talents, promote the localization of highly skilled talents by implementing more scientific research projects and innovative talent cultivation incentive mechanisms, and at the same time, improve the ability of deep processing, extend the industrial chain, and enhance added value.
