ashmanra said

A question about shipping tea overseas

A tea friend is moving to New Zealand and said she is pretty sure she can’t take her tea through customs. Are you allowed to MAIL tea to New Zealand, or is it restricted as an agricultural product? She will be gone a year and there are a few teas she can’t get there and doesn’t want to do without!

5 Replies
Miss Sweet said

If you weren’t allowed to mail tea to NZ I’d be screwed!
I bought home a HUGE bag (about half a suitcase) of tea samples back home from the World Tea Expo – just make sure its declared on the customs form. They’ll ask what it is and xray your bags, thats it. If you are mailing tea to NZ, it will be opened by customs and I’ve had some teas randomly confiscated (or say they objected to an ingredient in the tea and you would need to pay to have it treated – this only happened to me once with citrus peel).
But if your friend is going through Australia before coming here, customs officers are much, much, much stricter so I’d only bring plain teas on my person and have the rest mailed.

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Australia is extremely strict! The customs have confiscated handmade paper because of the leaves in the paper, I can’t ship tea to Australia either.

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ashmanra said

Thank you both so much for the information! My friend is actually going to New Zealand first and staying 6 months, and then going to Australia for 6 months. I would never have dreamed it was going to be difficult to get tea into Australia, but I hope they will have good tea for sale there since she can’t take it in with her. She is a doctor going to unserved areas.

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Adham said

I spent several years in Melbourne, Australia, and can vouch for T2 brand tea. They blend their own and have some wonderful varieties. I’ve actually looked at mail ordering some of their teas since leaving the country but the shipping costs are horrendous so it’ll just have to wait until I get back there one day.

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ashmanra said

Excellent! I will pass the recommendation on!

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