TEHRAN - Tea production in Iran is expected to reach 145,000 tons in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 20), Head of Iran's Tea Organization (ITO) Habib Jahansaz told IRNA.

The official noted that so far about 45,000 tons of tea leaves have been harvested by tea farmers, of which about 39,892 tons were high quality and 5,525 tons were low-quality second-grade leaves.

According to the official ITO has purchased all of the abovementioned harvested tea from the farmers.

He put the country’s annual tea consumption at about 100,000 tons, of which 30,000 tons are 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.

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.

The value of Iran’s tea import has declined 62 percent in the first 10 months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2023-January 20, 2024), as compared to the same period in the past year.

Based on the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration, during this period, about 33,683 tons of tea worth $185.75 million were imported from eight countries.

Meanwhile, Iran exported about 12,828 tons of tea to 25 countries with a value of about $15.8 million, 58.1 percent less than the figure for the previous year’s same period.

EF/