Saint Petersburg — 20 January 2027
Teamotea, the parent company behind the constellation of 35 Chinese tea brands, today published its 2026 annual impact report, detailing advances in sourcing transparency, conservation fund disbursements, carbon footprint reduction, and educational outreach. The report documents a year of accelerated integration between the company’s digital platforms and its physical supply chain, validating the constellation model as a driver of measurable social and environmental outcomes.
Sourcing & partnership outcomes
By the close of the 2026 calendar year, Teamotea had scaled its direct farm network to 217 contracts across nine provinces, up from 184 in 2025. The growth was concentrated in Yunnan, Fujian, and Zhejiang, where expanded relationships with smallholder cooperatives enabled deeper quality control and higher premiums for growers. All partner farms are now onboarded to the traceability infrastructure of puerh.app, which logs every lot from harvest to shipment with geotagged batch codes and third-party lab analyses. This transparency gave wholesale buyers and retail customers verifiable assurance that the *shēng pǔ'ěr* (生普洱) and *wò duī* (渥堆) pu-erh teas, *Lóngjǐng* (龙井), and *Mí Lán Xiāng* (蜜兰香) oolongs they purchased originated from documented, sustainable sources. Verified transaction volumes on puerh.app exceeded 7,200 tonnes, representing 62% of Teamotea’s total tea procurement for the year.
Conservation fund disbursements & environmental footprint
The report records CNY 18.7 million (USD 2.6 million) in disbursements from the Teamotea Conservation Fund to 15 county-level watershed restoration projects in Menghai, Xishuangbanna, Wuyishan, and Anxi. These funds supported replanting of native shade trees on 2,800 hectares, organic transition assistance for 94 smallholders, and installation of solar-powered irrigation pumps that reduced diesel consumption by 1.2 million litres. The company’s consolidated carbon footprint, audited against ISO 14064, fell 23% from the 2023 baseline, driven primarily by a shift to rail freight on the Kunming–Guangzhou corridor and elimination of single-use packaging across all consumer-facing SKUs. Scope 3 emissions per kilogram of processed leaf dropped to 0.87 kg CO₂e, versus 1.13 kg CO₂e in the baseline year. Progress on these fronts was accelerated by the sustainability advisory unit accessible at tea.services, which now supports 40 partner farms with carbon accounting and regenerative practice design.
Education programme reach
Teamotea’s education arm, operated through tea.school, enrolled 11,343 learners in 2026, a 41% year-on-year increase. The catalogue covered 28 courses spanning professional tea evaluation, sensory analysis, and certification tracks for tea academy proctors and senior proctors. Completion rates held at 88%, while the number of candidates sitting the accredited tea academy examination rose to 4,210, with 76% achieving certification. Extensions into trade hospitality were reinforced by the hospitality training module piloted in partnership with a St. Petersburg-based culinary institute; 300 participants completed the programme. The tea.school platform also launched a Mandarin-language track for Chinese-speaking professionals, contributing 1,700 new enrolments from Yunnan and Guangdong.
Chief Executive Officer perspective
Evgeniy Smoley, CEO and co-founder, commented: “The 2026 impact report reflects the deepening integration of our constellation — from farm-level transparency documented on puerh.app to the professional development tracked through tea.school. These metrics are not just numbers; they represent the livelihoods of thousands of tea-growing families and the long-term health of the ecosystems we depend on. The fact that we can simultaneously show double-digit growth in both direct sourcing and emission reductions validates the operational thesis we have been building over the last five years.”
About Teamotea
Teamotea is the holding company for a constellation of 35 Chinese tea product brands, operating thetea.app, puerh.app, shop.thetea.app, shop.puerh.app, tea.school, tea.travel, tea.community, tea.services, tea.events, and teamotea.com. Founded in Saint Petersburg with operational hubs in Kunming, Berlin, and Buryatia, the group employs a full-time team of 260 and works directly with over 200 tea farms. Its annual impact reports are published under a commitment to third-party verified transparency and are available at teamotea.com/investors.
GB/T 22111-2008, Geographical indication product—Pu'er tea, continues to serve as the foundational standard for the company’s quality-control framework.
Media contact
Dmitry Sologubov