The auction system, and where price is set
Most of the world's tea has been sold by auction for a century and a half. Where the auctions are, and who bids at them, determines what a grower is paid.
From the mid-nineteenth century, with Mombasa opening in the 1950s
A process, not a moment. This happened over a period rather than on a date, and the span is the honest answer.
London sales predate the colonial auctions; Calcutta, Colombo and Mombasa open across the following century. TeaHQ gives the span rather than picking one founding date, because the institution is the sequence rather than any one opening.
TeaHQ synthesis. TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
What happened
Bulk tea moved from producer to buyer through public auction, with brokers, tasters and catalogued lots. London was the centre for a century; the producing-country auctions then took over, and London's closed in 1998. Mombasa is now the largest.
Why it matters
It is where the commodity price actually forms, and it explains the shape of the industry: tea is sold in bulk lots to blenders who buy on taste and price rather than on origin, which is why most tea reaches a consumer as an anonymous blend. Everything the speciality trade does is a departure from this system.
Connected events
- 1839 — The Assam Company, and the start of plantation tea
- From the 1870s — A fungus turns Ceylon from coffee to tea
- From the early 1900s, with the smallholder agency founded in the 1960s — Tea planted in Kenya, and the smallholder turn
What this touches
Producing countries
Culture and history
Compiled from published sources by people who are not historians of this region or period. Where accounts conflict the disagreement is reported rather than settled.