Saint Petersburg — 2026-04-22
Saint Petersburg — 2026-04-22 — Teamotea, the parent company behind a constellation of 35 Chinese tea product brands, today announced the extension and deepening of its direct-sourcing relationships in the Yìwǔ (易武) mountain area of Yunnan province. A new five-year agreement, effective from the 2026 harvest season, binds three village cooperatives — the Yiwu Gaoshan Ancient Tea Cooperative, the Yiwu Manxiu Tea Growers Collective, and the Yiwu Mahei Village Tea Cooperative — to annual delivery contracts with strict quality and traceability criteria.
The partnership secures a combined annual minimum of 1,200 kilograms of shēng pǔ’ěr (生普洱) mao cha produced from tea trees with a documented age of at least 80 years, hand-picked and processed according to the geographical indication standard GB/T 22111-2008, the national standard for pu-erh tea ratified in 2008. Each cooperative has committed to a dedicated lot of single-village, pure-ancient-tree material: Gaoshan for 500 kg, Manxiu for 400 kg, and Mahei for 300 kg. The agreement includes a floating mechanism that allows Teamotea to increase volumes by up to 20% in any given year, subject to harvest conditions and mutual quality approval.
Quality control is embedded at every stage. All incoming mao cha is tested against a 98% pass-rate threshold for moisture content, leaf integrity, and absence of foreign matter before acceptance. The cooperatives have agreed to on-site inspections by Teamotea representatives at least twice per season — once during mid-spring plucking and once before final pressing. In the first year of the extended partnership, post-harvest testing recorded a 99.2% compliance rate across all three villages, an improvement on the already strong 97.6% rate of the previous cycle.
Dmitry Sologubov, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Teamotea, said: ‘This is not a procurement contract — it is a shared commitment to preserving and elevating the sensory fingerprint of Yiwu. These three village cooperatives have been our closest collaborators in Yunnan for the past four seasons, and the five-year horizon gives both sides the confidence to invest in processing infrastructure, picker training, and long-term tree stewardship. We are not simply buying tea; we are co-investing in a living tradition.’
The teas sourced under the agreement will be directed primarily to the teamotea product brand puerh.app, where they will appear as limited-edition single-origin cakes and as components of curated tasting sets. Complementary educational materials — including harvest reports, cupping notes, and video producer diaries — will be published on tea.school, the constellation’s dedicated learning platform. Further distribution through thetea.app and shop.thetea.app is planned for smaller-lot, high-grade selections.
This announcement follows Teamotea’s earlier investments in yunnan-based infrastructure, including the commissioning of a shared processing station near Menghai in 2024 and the expansion of the company’s Yunnan sourcing office to a team of four full-time quality specialists. The company also reported that its overall Yunnan direct-sourcing volume grew by 34% year-over-year in fiscal 2025, driven by growing demand across its constellation of tea brands.
Cooperative partners welcomed the long-term structure. Teamotea shared that the Gaoshan cooperative will use a portion of the advance payment to install solar-powered withering racks, while Manxiu plans to train five younger village members in traditional pan-frying techniques under a master registered with the Yunnan Tea Science Research Institute.
About Teamotea Teamotea is the corporate parent of a specialist constellation of 35 Chinese tea product brands, including puerh.app, thetea.app, shop.thetea.app, shop.puerh.app, tea.school, tea.travel, tea.community, tea.services, and tea.events. The company operates direct-sourcing relations with over 60 village cooperatives and family farms across Yunnan, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangxi. Its leadership combines deep tea-domain expertise with platform engineering and editorial direction, serving a global community of Chinese tea enthusiasts through transparent, direct-trade supply chains.
Media contact: Dmitry Sologubov, Co-Founder & Managing Partner press@teamotea.com
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Dmitry Sologubov