QI tea

Herbal Health and Qi Tea

Ten years ago, after 25 years in advertising and marketing, Joe d.Armenia, Managing Director of Herbal Health Ltd read about the health properties of green tea and decided to develop a specialist green tea brand; and so Qi Teas was born. At the time little was known about green tea and there were no suppliers of organic green tea from China in the UK. So Joe began an 11,000 mile journey to China to seek out the very best organic teas.

Joe d'Armenia tells us more

Herbal Health Ltd has only 4 full time staff in Europe and a sales and marketing team of 8. All our European staff are either family or friends of family! We have recently opened our own processing and packing factory in China where we employ another 20 people. In fact we are the first wholly owned foreign enterprise in WuYuan County.

What is the ethos of Qi Tea?

Originally I had to find the right quality and taste for Qi teas as well as farmers who, not only shared my vision and ambitions, but who were committed to a clean environment free of pesticides. Over the years I have formed strong relationships with the elected leaders of the 10 village communities responsible for Qi Tea production. We feel strongly that friendship and trust should be at the heart of our business. By demonstrating our commitment to the farmers and their communities, a strong partnership has been forged which encourages the farmers to add their own commitment to quality and traceability for Qi teas.

Ethics/Fair trade

Herbal Health Ltd runs 2 Fairtrade programmes - the Fairtrade Foundation and Ecocert.s Organic Fairtrade scheme. The first ensures that the farmer gets a fair price for the tea and the second guarantees farmers their yearly income and promotes environmental protection programmes.Herbal Health Ltd is directly involved with technical training, organic standards and the welfare of farmers, their families and community.. What are the goals of Herbal Health? Our focus is on ensuring the quality of the product from tea bush to shop shelf. We aim to make maximum use of natural organic ingredients with recognised health properties.

Market trends

When the company started, almost 10 years ago, very few people had heard of green tea. Since then green tea has become mainstream and the market has become very competitive. There are a lot of companies trying to jump on the green tea bandwagon.. Market for Qi Teas Qi Teas growth rate over the last 12 months has been in the region of 25 to 30%. This comes from an established customer base - the independent health food sector.

With so many new companies producting green tea, tell us what is special about Qi?

At Qi Teas we do things differently - Herbal Health Ltd is a small independent company, loyal to the independent sector and the only specialist brand of Chinese green and white teas on the market. Unlike other tea companies, Herbal Health Ltd buys its tea direct from the tea growers and packs on site, ensuring both the quality of the tea and its full traceability from the bush to the shop shelf. We source all our raw materials directly. So our teas are pure and consistently good. We use abundant quantities of real herbs, fruit and spices...Herbal Health Ltd now produces a wide range of organic green and white teas, including a range of energy teas and popular speciality products such as .White Christmas Tea.. The Qi brand is a big seller within the healthfood trade and its plain white and green teas are the top brand in most European markets.