Intl tea convention commences in Guizhou county

A total of nine investment project contracts are signed at the 2020 Fanjing Mountains International Tea Convention. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

The 2020 Fanjing Mountains International Tea Convention was held on Nov 27 in Jiangkou county, Tongren city, Southwest China's Guizhou province.

A total of nine investment project deals were signed at the convention with a contract value totaling 605 million yuan ($91.96 million).

A series of matcha related promotional events, seminars and competitions were held before and after the convention to showcase Guizhou's matcha industry to media outlets, purchasers and customers.

In recent years, Guizhou has earmarked 150,000 mu (10,000 hectares) of land for planting tea to make matcha products, with Tongren as the core area.

Guizhou has 56 tea grinding production lines and two refined matcha production lines, forming a matcha industry layout with close cooperation between upstream enterprises and cluster development.

Led by Gui Tea Group, China's largest matcha production and sales company, Guizhou's matcha industry occupies one-fifth of China's matcha output volume and one-tenth of the world's matcha output volume. Guizhou is the second-largest matcha production base in China.

Since the beginning of this year, Guizhou's tea industry has overcome the negative impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic and achieved an increase in tea export volume during the first three quarters.

By the end of October, Guizhou had produced 401,000 metric tons of tea valued at 47.43 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.91 percent and 9.88 percent, respectively.

In mid-November, 11 counties in Guizhou were selected among China's top 100 counties for tea, with Meitan county ranking first.