You may be surprised to learn that tea is the second most popular beverage behind water¹. What may be even more surprising is which countries drink the most of it per capita. It isn't who you think!
According to a report by IGG, as of 2016 the largest tea consuming country is Turkey. Now this data is 6 years old as of publication, however both the IGG and other tea authorities do not seem to have done a significant update since. According to this study by IbisWorld², US tea consumption is at 0.9 pounds per capita, which would be an 80% increase in 6 years over the IGG study in 2016. However, in the IbisWorld study, 2016 per capita tea consumption in the US is also 0.9 pounds per capita, which is a variance of 80% to the baseline of the IGG study. According to another study by IGG in January 2022³, Turkey maintains the top spot even after accounting for changes in trends. Overall, the report details the following top four according to IGG as of 2020:
- Turkey, 3.88 kg or 8.55 pounds of tea per capita consumption
- Morocco, 1.89 kg or 4.17 pounds of tea per capita
- China, 1.82 kg or 4.01 pounds of tea per capita
- Libya, 1.77 kg or 3.90 pounds of tea per capita
That's a lot of tea! The highest growth in demand comes from Asia and Africa, where demand has risen in China (6.8 percent), Bangladesh (5.4 percent) Turkey (3.5 percent), Indonesia (4.1 percent), Pakistan (5.4 percent), Malawi (16.3 percent), Kenya (5.9 percent), Rwanda (5.3 percent) and Uganda (13.5 percent)³.
¹ Martin, Laura C. (2007). Tea: The Drink that Changed the World
² https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/per-capita-tea-consumption/4671/
³ https://www.fao.org/3/ni906en/ni906en.pdf