Tea Prices going Up?
In case anybody is needing an excuse to stock up on favorite teas, I read recently an interesting, if frightening, article
http://teaconomics.teatra.de/2012/11/25/hamburg-or-free-is-the-name-of-the-game/
on the prices of teas possibly going up in the future. Far from certain but still to keep in mind. The reasoning behind that article is that the tax status of Hamburg Port will change in new year 2013. Most tea in Europe (or even the world?) passes through Hamburg, so the worry some economies of scale for resellers will be lost. Hope the article is wrong, but it´s pretty interesting as is that blog, putting it here just in case.
Wow, thanks for sharing.
I think the best way to reduce the risk of these kinds of things happening is to democratize the global trade of tea. I am currently building Tealet (http://tealet.com/our-mission) a marketplace that is built upon transparency and connections. The prices are determined to ensure fair profit to the grower, but are reasonable considering the unique quality of each. The prices are not determined by markups for a large network of middlemen.
Good luck, very nice, but I really don´t see how your system would allow for the very large economies of scale described in the article or work to decrease overheads in tea trade, particularly legal overheads!
That’s the problem we are trying to solve. Learning more and more everyday.
Actually large economies of scale are useful for free trade, like obviously most countries in Europe aren’t producing their own tea, so the large market held by say a company sourcing tea from China is more efficient than tea from each and every country in the market.
That said there is a lot more going on here than just economies of scale.
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