2024 US Instant Tea Import Summary
About one-third of 2024 US instant tea imports by value originated from China- $21.5 million. Imports from China, India, and Ireland provide a combined 76.9% of total import value.
Among the leaders, China showed the greatest gains in volume, increasing over 44% from 2023 to 2024. By comparison, world total imports increased by 30% during the same time period.
Imports by value followed a corresponding trend, with total world value up by 21.8% over the previous year. Imports from China were up 42.9% during the same period.
With import volumes growing at a slightly faster rate than value, average USD per KG saw a slight overall decline from the previous year. $/kg rates decreased, except for India, which saw a rates rise from $7.42 to $7.54 per kg.
Hard tea is one of the more noteworthy areas where growth of instant tea imports will play out. 2020-2023 saw an 80% increase in the number of hard tea brands in the global market, and a 34% increase in the number of SKUs during the same period. Dunkin, Lipton, Arizona, and Jack Daniel have entered the market with their respective lines of hard teas. Additionally, some of the top canned and bottle teas are keeping pace with sales of some of the popular bottle water brands (Jan BevNet, p25-6). This trend could be further buttressed by the FDA’s dietary guidelines that allow some unsweetened tea products to have packaging marking the product as “healthy.”