Tagged: exports
The Rooibos South Africa Keeps for Itself
Rooibos exports get the coverage: a record year, a protected name in Europe, buyers in more than fifty countries. The quieter figure in the same industry document is that roughly two fifths of the crop the numbers account for never crosses a border at all.
The World Wants Your Cup. Only One Valley Pours It.
Rooibos exports passed 10,000 tonnes for the first time in 2025, reaching more than 50 countries, even as the harvest behind it shrank. Here is what that means for the cup in your own hands, and why the Ministry is not worried.
Nobody Has Ever Auctioned a Kilogram of Rooibos
Nearly every major tea in the world passes through a public auction where buyers bid in the open. Rooibos never has. Here is how its price actually gets set, and why the gap has never been filled.
The Biggest Rooibos Market on Earth Never Grew a Single Bush
For nearly sixty years the country that bought and resold more rooibos than any other on earth was Germany, which cannot grow a stem of it. How a health-food house sold the tea under a Kilimanjaro logo, how Hamburg became the trade's logistics hub, and why Japan finally took the crown.
The Rooibos Trade
How the red bush is priced without a public auction, where the crop actually goes, what its certification marks verify, how the name is legally protected, and how concentrated the buying side really is.