TEHRAN – Iranian farmers have managed to produce 26,171 tons of dry tea in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21), Head of Iran's Tea Organization (ITO) Habib Jahansaz told ISNA.

The official noted that so far 116,000 tons of tea leaves have been purchased from the country’s tea farmers, from which the mentioned amount of dry tea has been produced.

According to Jahansaz, the government pays 25 percent of the value of the purchased tea to the farmers, and the rest is paid by tea processing factory owners.

He put the country’s annual tea consumption at about 100,000 tons, of which about 25,000-30,000 tons is supplied through domestic production and the rest through imports.

The demand in the domestic market indicates that there is a good potential to increase tea production in the country, he said.

The official further noted that Iran has also exported 20,000 tons of tea during the first seven months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-October 22).

Tea harvest season in Iran starts in farmlands across the northern provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran in early May.

More than 55,000 families grow tea over 28,000 hectares of farmland in the two provinces, accounting for 90 percent of the country’s total tea production.

In late December 2019, Jahansaz named Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Afghanistan as the top destinations for Iranian tea exports.

Iran also exports tea to India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Canada, Australia, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Georgia.

EF/MA