We were honored to be able to present at this wonderful and fun event.
Enjoy some pictures from the day!
We are available for conference and meetings . We love talking about our teas!
We can tailor our presentation to fit your needs- Teas, entrepreneurship, Flowers, gardening, family business, women in business, as well as historical presentations about the Underground Railroad are just some topics we have presented here at in the past. Send us a message and we’d love to meet you!
Check out the video that we recorded live at the Garden and Flower Conference on our FB Page
Tea Tourism is a new emerging niche market in the tea industry. Like wine, coffee and micro-brew tours, people are obsessed with traveling back to the point of origin of their favorite beverage. With tea being the second most consumed beverage on the planet, it would follow that tea tourism would become the next hottest tourism destinations.
With tea being grown worldwide, there are several different places that you can visit to experience the process of making tea. A real tea connoisseur would have explored all the different types of tea and their growing places worldwide by the end of their life. Their passport would bear stamps from China and Japan and India and Kenya. They would even spend time in the Hawaiian Islands, And what tea traveler could pass up High Tea in England?
There is much to explore to fully embrace tea. While we will explore all the different places to visit to experience tea eventually, we are starting some place outside the box. Sunshine Teas is that company that likes to find the quirky and different ways to do things. When you think of tea, do you think of Uganda? Well, you should. For the first visit on the tea tourism map, we chose Uganda Tea Tourism to highlight first.
One big reason is the tea…The teas of Uganda are high grown teas produced at an altitude of 5800 feet above sea level. The teas have special characteristics and are generally bright, brisk and quite strong. This makes them fit very well with most blends around the world. So while you are enjoying the beautiful lush tea covered mountains of Uganda, you will be enjoying their beautiful teas.
In the shadow of the Rwenzori Moutains, is the Ishasha Wilderness Camp situated inside the Southern Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park on the Ntungwe river, and is an idyllic retreat for people who truly enjoy the wilderness. This exclusive camp offers quality accommodation and services in this unspoilt remote southern sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park famous for its tree climbing lions that can sometimes be spotted resting in the branches of the large fig trees in the area.
As you approach Fort Portal in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains, you enter Uganda’s famous tea plantation region. A carpet of green spreads before you, as far as the eye can see, and seems an unusual contrast to the countryside through which you have just passed
One tea factory worth checking out is the Igara Tea Factory. This factory has been situated in the hills of Southwestern Uganda for about fifty years. They manufacture tea grown in pure soils alongside sweet banana, coffee and matooke. Igara’s smallholders share ownership in the factory, called Igara Tea Growers Factory, a cooperative of 6,000 small holders. Supporting Free Trade Certified teas is extremely important in uplifting these cooperative farmers.
Fort Portal is Famous for its tea. This area is gifted by nature with a cool climate which ensures a relatively slow plant growth rate This naturally makes the tea a high grown, high quality tea.
The consumption of this tea is associated with many health benefits. These include anti-allergy, anti-oxidation, anti-hypertension, anti-viral, anti-obese, anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, enzyme inhibition and many other human health problems. You can buy the tea in any local shop or even better visit one of Fort Portal’s tea plantations.Another tea company to check out is the Kijura Tea Company.
Finally, Chimpanzee Forest Guest House is positioned on a family owned tea plantation near the Kibale National Park. The property offers rooms as well as small cottages, all with spectacular views.
There are some other tea growing areas in Uganda such as, Kyenjojo, Mityana, Jinja, Bushenyi. and other tea factories including Kagoma Tea, Mukwano Tea, Bicycle Tea, and Nakanda Tea.
Tea tourism in Uganda promises to be not only beautiful and adventurous, but also very tasty. Where else can you see chimpanzees and lions, hike through a rain forest, see a snow capped mountain and enjoy a beautiful cup of tea all at the same time?
Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world. The first being water.
So the tea market is hot.
According to The Tea Association of America’s Annual Report, four of five consumers drink tea. That’s a lotta tea. Ok, so if you weren’t born before 1980, you might not have gotten that joke, but that really is a lot of tea being consumed annually. And this makes for a market that has continually been on steady growth pattern for the past two decades, and it shows no signs of slowing in growth over the the next decade.
Between 1990 and today, the wholesale tea business in the United States has grown from a $2 BIllion dollar business to a $10 Billion dollar business.
In other words, it’s sizzling, smoking hot.
The tea industry is broken down into wholesale, retail, ready to drink and specialty. In addition to these traditional tea offerings, there are tea flavored products, tea tourism, and health and wellness products made with tea and blends. These products are also on the rise.
Sunshine Teas “Happiness”
Did I mention that this industry was hot?
I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet…. the specialty tea market. Sunshine Teas offers a specialized method of tea brewing and it also offers fruit infused teas. The number one growing market in the tea industry is fruit teas. In the United States, we love it sweet. According to the World Tea Expo’s Top Five Trends of 2014, fruit tea is the #1 trend in teas because fruits add sweetness without adding refined sugars.
In other words, our specialized fruits teas are the top choice in a very steady and continually growing market.
But the good news doesn’t stop there, loose leaf teas, flower teas, and teas that benefit your over all health are four of the top five growth sectors in this market. The tea industry in the U.S. is poised to make over $2 Billion in 2015, with 60% of that market share in specialty teas. Small boutique companies like Sunshine Teas which offer loose teas with flowers and fruits that accent the benefits to your health and wellness are exactly what this market segment loves.
And another new and growing market in teas is tea tourism, which has been featured on many national television shows and will see a huge uptick in the near future. Smithsonian recently featured Chinese Tea Tourism and wrote about the increase in interest worldwide in tea tourism. Sunshine Teas expects to be poised to take advantage of this market niche through our connections with tea growers in Taiwan, India, S. America, China and Africa. So stay tuned for exciting new offerings in the future!
All told, the tea leaves appear to paint a very rosy picture for the tea industry over the next 5 to 10 years. The forces in place are time proven and significant and should continue to positively effect growth for the future. – U.S. Tea Association.
you enter Uganda’s famous tea plantation region. A carpet of green spreads before you, as far as the eye can see, and seems an unusual contrast to the countryside through which you have just passed
Sunshine Teas 