This will be the face of Zealong Tea Estate in Osaka, Japan. Image / Supplied
A slice of New Zealand will soon have a prominent spot in the world's fourth-busiest train station, after organic tea plantation Zealong signed an outlet deal in Osaka, Japan.
More than 2.3 million people daily pass through Osaka Station City, where the Waikato tea producer will establish a tea cafe and retail showcase in collaboration with JR West Rail-owned Delicius Pasticceria.
Zealong chief executive Gigi Crawford said the deal with JR West, being marked at a ceremony at the Gordonton tea estate today, is a significant breakthrough given Japan grows tea.
It was also the first retail opportunity the rail company's big food service subsidiary business had given an outsider, she said.
JR West is one of Japan's biggest rail companies, with transport, distribution and real estate businesses and 47,800 employees. Its line runs through 1174 stations covering nearly 5000km and 18 prefectures, she said.
Osaka Station City is large enough to house three major department stores and 1100 shops.
The Zealong store will open alongside an existing Delicius in the station, offering commuters tea with their takeaway cake.
The outlet has been designed internally by Zealong staff, in the same style which won a finalist place among 85 entries from 27 countries in the 2018 Euroshop Retail Design Award for its Gordonton Vista showcase. The contest lured such arbiters of style as New York's Museum of Modern Art and Adidas' Milan store.
Ten-year-old Zealong, which has won many international gourmet and elite beverage awards for its teas, is New Zealand's only tea plantation.
Majority-owned and founded by Taiwan's Chen family, the company markets and exports a range of premium teas from its cornerstone pure oolong to black, botanical and more recently, a range of heritage blends. All the tea is grown to international organic certification standard on its 48ha estate near Hamilton, and blended from one cultivar, Camellia sinensis.
About 70 per cent of the 15-20 tonnes of handpicked tea produced annually is exported.
Zealong's biggest market is luxury tea shops and retail outlets in Europe. Its UK customers include Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.
Crawford said Zealong had been exporting tea in very small quantities to Japan for about five years.
The deal is a bright spot in the pandemic, which has hit Zealong hard.
Overall, revenue was down about 40 per cent, and the events and hospitality side about 60 per cent, Crawford said.
Zealong's picturesque estate and high tea restaurant recorded 40,000 visitors last year, most of them overseas tourists. The estate does not take tourist buses.
The company has had to lay off five fulltimers, leaving it with 30 staff. The extent of the November harvest is in doubt because its not known if specialist overseas tea processors will be able to enter the country. Tea pickers are less of a Covid-19 issue because Zealong's training programmes mean 80 per cent of this workforce is now local.
Crawford said the US market had disappeared but Germany and France, where the hot button consumer focus was food environmental sustainability and quality, were still delivering for Zealong, she said.
"We will recover. We have been so conservative in the past and very careful to spread our business between countries, events and national and international sales.
"But the problem is it is very difficult to forecast. We can't plan cashflow. We don't know how deep is the hole."
Over a decade, Zealong has developed its markets and business in five stages.
First stage was New Zealand, second was Europe, third the US and fourth, Japan.
Stage five is China.
Tea has been sold into northern China in very small quantities for five years, with heavy emphasis on its organic New Zealand provenance. China is a huge tea-drinking market but its local growing industry's reputation is bedevilled by issues of contaminants and residues.
The China market had been "too big" to take on fully while maintaining Zealong's reputation for pure, high-quality, luxury tea, Crawford said.
But the company was now negotiating for a prospective partner to enter the Shanghai market.
"Shanghai is the equivalent of Paris [for retail]. But it's a very cruel market if you fail – you don't get a second chance. It's taken us so many years just to get to this point."
The company declined to discuss revenues. Crawford said the investment required in the JR West venture was minimal.
The new Japan outlet will showcase information about New Zealand and the Waikato.