Anxi Tieguanyin traceability programme launch
Saint Petersburg — 2026-05-15 — Teamotea, the parent company of 35 Chinese tea product brands, announced the full launch of its Anxi *Tiěguānyīn* (铁观音) traceability programme. Each lot now includes a digital passport with photo trail, picker names, and processing facility data, accessible via QR code.
Saint Petersburg — 2026-05-15
Saint Petersburg — 2026-05-15 — Teamotea, the parent company of 35 Chinese tea product brands, today announced the immediate launch of its cooperative-level traceability programme for Anxi Tiěguānyīn (铁观音), bringing unprecedented transparency to one of the world’s most celebrated oolong teas. Every lot of Anxi Tieguanyin shipped from this date forward will carry a digital passport that captures the complete journey from tea garden to packaged product, including a time-stamped photo trail, names of the tea pickers, and details of the processing facility.
The programme was piloted with 15 lots beginning in late March 2026 and has now been extended to the entire spring harvest, covering 230 smallholder tea farmers organized under the Anxi Tieguanyin Cooperative. These farmers cultivate tea across 12 villages in the Xiping and Gande townships of Anxi County, Fujian Province. The spring harvest volume enrolled in the programme totals 45 metric tons of finished leaf, processed at eight registered workshops whose daily capacity ranges from 800 kilograms to 1,200 kilograms each.
Each consumer package will include a QR code that, when scanned, opens the digital passport on the Teamotea platform. The passport contains: geolocation of the garden plot; harvest date and time window; names of the pickers who selected the leaves that day; the specific processing facility and its registration number; photographs from withering, fixation, rolling, and drying stages; temperature and humidity logs during the critical semi-oxidation phase; and laboratory test results for pesticide residues and heavy metals conducted by an ISO 17025-accredited laboratory in Quanzhou. The entire record is anchored by blockchain-based timestamps and reconciled against the Anxi Tea Industry Association’s production registry.
“Every lot of Anxi Tieguanyin we source now carries a transparent record from garden to cup,” said Evgeniy Smoley, CEO and co-founder of Teamotea. “This programme reflects our commitment to building direct, verifiable relationships with tea cooperatives. Consumers deserve to know who picked their leaves and how the tea was processed. By publishing picker names and processing facility data, we move beyond generic origin claims and give drinkers genuine accountability.”
The traceability system aligns with GB/T 19598-2006, the national standard for Anxi Tieguanyin product of geographical indication, and has been designed to support future compliance with evolving EU deforestation regulation and agri-food chain transparency requirements. Third-party verification of the data trail is performed by the Quanzhou affiliate of China Inspection & Testing Group on a lot-by-lot basis, with results made available through the QR code.
Consumers can now purchase Anxi Tieguanyin lots bearing the traceability passport through the Teamotea platform at https://shop.thetea.app. The traceability record is accessible before purchase via the product listing, allowing buyers to examine the full origin story before adding tea to their cart.
For enthusiasts interested in experiencing Anxi County’s tea landscapes first-hand, Teamotea’s travel brand offers curated origin tours that visit the very villages and processing workshops enrolled in the traceability programme. Details are available at https://tea.travel.
The traceability programme is being extended to additional tea origins in Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Guangdong over the next calendar year, with shēng pǔ’ěr (生普洱) from Menghai expected to join the passport system by the autumn 2026 harvest.
About Teamotea
Teamotea, founded in 2020, is headquartered in Saint Petersburg, Russia, with operational hubs in Berlin and Kunming. The company operates a constellation of 35 Chinese tea-focused product brands spanning direct-to-consumer e-commerce, subscription programs, education and certification services, and curated travel. Through a network of cooperative partnerships in every major tea-producing province of China, Teamotea sources and delivers specialty tea globally while investing in supply-chain transparency, farmer training, and digital provenance tools.
Media contact: Dmitry Sologubov Co-Founder & Managing Partner press@teamotea.com
Media contact
Dmitry Sologubov