The deputy director of a semi-official tea producers’ union told state-run ILNA news agency that lack of support towards the factory and tremendous smuggling of tea has caused a lot of loss and harm to factories producing tea.
“These processing facilities produce only 10 tons of tea, instead of 30 tons per day. Domestic production of tea is 10 to 12 thousand tons. However, due to import of foreign tea, tea processing facilities owners are even unable to sell this minimum tea produced,” Pirooz Shaabani said.
“More than 100 thousand tons of tea is smuggled to the country. This is while tea farms have the potential to produce the domestic need but due to the negligence of the officials and the lack of payment to the farmers, the production of the country’s green tea has greatly reduced from the previous years.”