Hurun China Tea Report 2025

HURUN RESEARCH INSTITUTE RELEASES

HURUN CHINA TEA PLANTATION REGIONS 2025

HURUN CHINA TEA BRANDS 2025

HURUN CHINA TEA-BASED DRINKS BRANDS 2025

ANXI OF FUJIAN PROVINCE NUMBER ONE ‘TEA PLANTATION REGION’, FOLLOWED BY MENGHAI OF YUNNAN, ANHUA OF HUNAN, FUDING OF FUJIAN AND HENGZHOU OF GUANGXI

WHERE ARE THE TEA PLANTATION REGIONS BASED? YUNNAN NUMBER 1 WITH 14 TEA PLANTATION REGIONS, FOLLOWED BY HUBEI WITH 13 AND FUJIAN WITH 11

TAETEA, CHINA TEA, BAMA, TIANFU AND XIAOGUANCHA MAKE UP TOP 5 OF THE ‘CHINA TEA BRANDS’

WHERE ARE THE BEST TEA BRANDS BASED? NINGDE OF FUJIAN WAS TOP WITH 8 TEA BRANDS, FOLLOWED BY HUANGSHAN OF ANHUI AND HANGZHOU OF ZHEJIANG WITH 5 EACH, BEJING AND ZUNYI OF GUIZHOU WITH 4 EACH

MIXUE, GOOD ME, CHAGEE, HEYTEA AND AUNTEA JENNY TOP 5 OF ‘CHINA TEA-BASED DRINKS BRANDS’

(19 May 2025, Fuding, Ningde, in Fujian Province) The Hurun Research Institute today released the Hurun China Tea Report 2025, made up of three lists. The Hurun China Tea Plantation Regions 2025 is a list of the 100 most successful tea plantation county-level regions in China, measured by their tea output and number of tea companies. The Hurun China Tea Brands 2025 is a list of the 100 most successful tea brands in China, measured by their scale, brand and impact. The Hurun China Tea-Based Drinks Brands 2025 is a list of the 20 most successful tea-based drinks brands, measured by their value, ie market cap for listed companies and estimated value for the non-listed companies. This is the second year of the Hurun China Tea Report.

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun, said:

“I am delighted to release the Hurun China Tea Report for the second year running and hope this will help consumers and investors have a better understanding of where the best tea comes from, which tea brands are doing well and which tea-based drinks are creating the biggest value.”

“Bubble tea is perhaps the single biggest cultural phenomenon to come out of China in the past fifty years, with thousands of stores around the world now marketing themselves with a Chinese theme. The market leader Mixue has nearly 5000 overseas stores, predominantly in South East Asia.”

“Mixue and the Top 20 Hurun tea-based drinks brands, many offering bubble tea, are now worth ten times the combined value of the Top 100 Hurun traditional tea brands, showing quite what an impact young consumers are having on the industry. These tea-based drinks brands now make up almost 10% of China’s 3.7 million tonnes of tea production. It does not stop there. Of the 47 startups on the Hurun Unicorns and Future Unicorns indices, over half are from China, suggesting that consumer behaviour in China is leading a revolution in the food and drinks industry.”

“Yunnan, Hubei and Fujian produce are the three biggest tea regions, making up 14, 13 and 11, respectively, of the tea plantation counties on our Hurun China Tea Plantation Regions 2025. If you are interested in Chinese tea, these are the places to visit.”

“Among my entrepreneur friends, some only drink one kind of tea, such as green tea, throughout the day. More and more, however, I meet people who mix it up, drinking stronger black tea or Oolong tea and perhaps even a cup of coffee in the morning, then switching to white tea and Pu’er tea in the afternoon. These new tea drinking habits have created a broader market space for tea brands.”

This is a brief summary of the Chinese-language press release. For the full press release in Chinese, please see www.hurun.net.

Geographic Distribution of Hurun China Tea Plantation Regions 2025, by province and city

Tea plantation regions are at the county or ‘县’ level, which are part of the administration of a city, which in turn are part of the administration of a province.

Geographic Distribution of Hurun China Tea Brands 2025, by province and city

Hurun China Tea Plantation Regions Top 100 2025

Hurun China Tea Brands 2025

Hurun China Tea-Based Drinks Brands 2025

Methodology

Hurun China Tea Plantation Regions 2025 is a list of the Top 100 counties in China, based on the size of their tea industry, the overall number of tea companies registered there and the number of large tea businesses based there.

Hurun China Tea Brands 2025 is a list of the Top 100 tea brands, based on their fundamentals (sales, registered capital, etc…), their industry leadership (patents, brands, regional, national and international awards, etc…), and social influence (number of stores, social media presence, etc…).

Candidates criteria:

(1)The main business of the company is tea planting, refined tea processing, or tea brand operation.

(2)The registered capital of the enterprise is more than CNY 20mn.

Hurun China Tea-Based Drinks Brands 2025 is a list of the 20 most valuable businesses in the field of tea-based drinks in China, based on their fundamentals, including market cap for listed companies and valuation for non listed companies, industry leadership and social influence.

About Hurun Inc.

Promoting Entrepreneurship Through Lists and Research

Oxford, Shanghai, Mumbai

Established in the United Kingdom in 1999, Hurun is a research and media group, promoting entrepreneurship through its lists and research. Widely regarded as an opinion-leader in the world of business, Hurun generated 8 billion views on the Hurun brand in 2023, mainly in China and India, and recently expanding to the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

Best-known for the Hurun Rich List series, telling the stories of the world’s successful entrepreneurs in China, India and the world, Hurun’s other key series focus on young businesses and entrepreneurs, through the Hurun Unicorns Index, two Hurun Future Unicorns indices, the Hurun Uth series and the Hurun Pioneers series.

Hurun has grown to become the world’s largest list compiler for start-ups, ranking over 3000 start-ups across the world through its annual Hurun Global Unicorns Index (startups with a valuation of US$1bn+), and two Hurun Future Unicorn Indexes: Gazelles, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within three years, and Cheetahs, most likely to ‘go unicorn’ within five years.

The Hurun Pioneering Young Startups and Entrepreneurs series focuses on startups set up within the last ten years and founders aged 45 or under.

The Hurun Uthseries includes the Under25s, Under30s, Under35s and Under40s awards, representing the cream of each generation of young entrepreneurs who have founded businesses with a social impact and worth US$1m, US$10m, US$50m and US$100m respectively.

Other lists include the Hurun 500 series, ranking the most valuable companies in the world, China and India, the Hurun Global High Schools List, ranking the world’s best independent high schools, the Hurun Philanthropy List, ranking the biggest philanthropists and the Hurun Art List, ranking the world’s most successful artists alive today.

Hurun provides research reports co-branded with some of the world’s leading financial institutions and regional governments.

Hurun hosts high-profile events across China and India, as well as London, Paris, New York, LA, Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Luxembourg, Istanbul, Dubai and Singapore.

For further information, please visit www.hurun.net.

❖ END ❖