The World Wants Your Cup. There Is Still Only One Valley That Can Pour It.

According to the South African Rooibos Council, the industry's own trade body, rooibos now reaches more than 50 countries, and exports passed 10,000 tonnes for the first time in 2025, about 10,930 tonnes (about 12,000 US tons), nearly double the 5,900 tonnes (about 6,500 US tons) shipped out a decade earlier, in 2015. Japan is the single biggest buyer. None of that changes where the leaf in your own cup came from. It still came from the Cederberg. It could not have come from anywhere else, and that is worth pausing on before the numbers run away with you.

Fifty countries, one valley

The scale is real. The South African Rooibos Council's own figures put the industry at roughly 8,000 workers in growing and the activity around it, more than 10 billion cups sold in 2023 alone, and a top-five export list, as of that year, of Japan, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. That is a genuinely global drink now, not a Cape Town curiosity a traveller brings home in a tin. And yet every gram of it, sold in Osaka or Amsterdam or a corner shop three streets from you, was grown in the same stretch of the Western and Northern Cape, because Aspalathus linearis will not grow anywhere else on the planet, a fact this office has certified before and stands by here.

A tighter harvest behind a record export year

Here is the part worth knowing plainly, not glossed over. Reported production fell from about 17,000 tonnes (about 18,700 US tons) in 2023 to about 15,000 tonnes (about 16,500 US tons) in 2025, even as exports climbed to their record. A single valley is now being asked for more rooibos than ever, by more countries than ever, while the harvest itself was smaller two years running. The industry's own account ties the dip to the same climate pressure that shows up elsewhere in the Cederberg's story, drought and heat stress on a crop that already grows at the edge of what it can tolerate. That is not a crisis this office is declaring. It is a tension worth naming honestly: demand up, supply down, in the one place on earth that can answer either.

Why the people who grow it are not alarmed

The two people whose job it actually is to worry about this are, by their own public statements, calm about it, with one shared caveat. Dawie de Villiers, the Rooibos Council's chairperson, has put the industry's own position plainly: "Rooibos is not a volume-driven commodity. Its long-term value lies in quality, origin integrity, and responsible stewardship." Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, made the same point from the economics side, with the caveat attached: "South African rooibos is distinct, and I think that its supply constraint at particular points is not necessarily a hindrance to an extent that people could move into other markets. But we do need consistency." Distinctiveness lowers the risk of a buyer simply substituting something else in rooibos's place; it does not erase it, and both men's own words say so. And rooibos, by law, cannot be grown elsewhere and sold under its own name; the geographical indication and protected-designation shields this office has recorded before exist for exactly this situation, so a tighter harvest cannot be quietly solved by planting the bush somewhere cheaper and calling it rooibos anyway.

One valley, carrying a bigger thirst

Nothing about your own next cup changes today. It will still be rooibos from the Cederberg, because it is not possible for it to be anything else. What the export figures tell you is that you are one of a genuinely large and growing number of people reaching for the same red bush, in a great many more kitchens than there used to be, drawing on a harvest that has had two tighter years running. That is worth knowing the way you would want to know that a favourite small producer has become popular: with real pleasure that the secret is out, and a small, honest note of care for the one valley now carrying all of it.

Sources

1. Industry Statistics, South African Rooibos Council, on employment (roughly 8,000 workers), the more than 10 billion cups sold across 2023, the number of export markets (more than 50 countries), and the top five 2023 export destinations (Japan, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom).
2. Rooibos exports soar even as climate stress squeezes Cederberg supply, Daily Maverick, 26 February 2026, on 2025 export tonnage (about 10,930 tonnes, up from 5,900 tonnes in 2015), the production decline (about 17,000 tonnes in 2023 to about 15,000 tonnes in 2025), and quotes from Dawie de Villiers (SA Rooibos Council) and Wandile Sihlobo (Agricultural Business Chamber of SA).