Quzhou named town of tea processing machines

Workers at a local Quzhou tea company are busy operating machines to process tea leaves. [Photo/WeChat account: quzhoufb]

Quzhou in East China's Zhejiang province was named the Town of Tea Processing Machines in China by the China International Tea Culture Institute on April 14 at the opening ceremony of the King of Longding Tea Championship.

Quzhou enjoys a long history in the tea industry, which originated in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and thrived in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Since China's reform and opening up in the 1980s the local municipal Party committee and the municipal government have attached great value to the development of the tea industry and built tea processing bases, cultivating competitive tea-related companies and expanding target markets.

Among those markets the tea processing machine manufacturing sector has seen relatively fast development.

The city now has grown into the largest development and research base for tea processing machine manufacturing in China.

As of 2018, the tea processing machines made in Quzhou took up roughly 40 percent of such machines in the Chinese market and the output value of the sector in the city exceeded 500 million yuan ($74.55 million).

"Local tea processing machine manufacturing companies also cooperated with universities to develop automatic production lines and obtained more than 100 national patents," noted Su Zhongqiang, representative of the sector in Quzhou.

According to the local municipal bureau of agriculture and rural areas, Quzhou plans to establish an alliance of tea processing machine manufacturers in a bid to put the city into a global hub position.