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Bloomberg
  • 2 days ago
Transcript
00:00These Matcha Kit Kats are basically liquid gold anywhere but Japan.
00:04Matcha may have started there, but it's now a worldwide craze,
00:07and there's a new player in the $4.53 billion market, China.
00:11The biggest tea producer in the world knows an opportunity when it sees one.
00:14Matcha-flavored lattes, croissants, tarts.
00:17With China-dominating electric vehicles, smartphones, furniture, and solar panels,
00:21it might feel inevitable that matcha will go the same way.
00:23Just one factory in China's Guizhou province is producing 2,000 metric tons of matcha a year.
00:29That's almost half of Japan's annual output.
00:31And by some measures, China is already the biggest grower.
00:34About 4,000 tons were processed in 2020.
00:37That's more than half the matcha sold around the world.
00:39But there are things Japan can do to defend itself from a foreign attack.
00:43In terms of mass market production, the game has surely already been lost.
00:47China simply has more resources.
00:49It's got 30 times the farmland of Japan.
00:51It produces about 50 times more green tea.
00:54But the high-end tea market is wide open if Japan just has a strategy.
00:58I think matcha needs to be far more assertive about what makes it special.
01:01Like champagne, for example.
01:03Geographical indications, or GI, are the trademark-style laws
01:07that prevent wine producers outside the Champagne region in France from using the name champagne.
01:12Japan only introduced its first GI rules in 2015.
01:16But there are no protections for matcha.
01:18Growers in the Nishio region actually asked to get taken off the register in 2020
01:21because they reckon the methods required to keep the designation
01:24were pricing them out of Japan's price-sensitive tea market.
01:27That's a defeatist approach, given the worldwide craze for matcha right now.
01:31Some of the world's great fortunes were built on the decades of efforts
01:34that turned champagne from a local oddity into a worldwide luxury good.
01:39Japan's tea farmers should take a swig of something that'll lift their confidence
01:42and try to get the same thing for matcha.
01:45Japan's tea farmers should take a swig of something that黃金
02:06should always be a champion.
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