THE market value of China’s new-style tea drinks is likely to surpass 200 billion yuan (US$27.88 billion) in 2025, an industry report shows. The value of the market is expected to reach 149.8 billion yuan in 2023, according to the report jointly released by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association and e-commerce platform Meituan. Targeting young consumers, new-style tea drinks such as cold brew tea, tea latte, fruit tea and cheese tea, often use fresh ingredients and are made with innovative recipes and with the support of technology. The report stressed the rapid expansion of this market, noting that there were around 515,000 new-style tea shops in China by the end of August 2023, a surge of more than 36% from the end of 2020. In June 2023, new-style tea shops accounted for about 57.7% of all China’s beverage stores, according to data from online platforms including Meituan and Dianping. A report on the high-quality development of new-style tea drinks in China in 2022 shows that the market size of new tea drinks in China exceeded 290 billion yuan (US$42.7 billion) last year, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%. There were around 450,000 new-style tea stores across the country in 2022 and a dozen major tea makers, which own over 1,000 stores across the country, such as Mixue Bingcheng, CoCo, Chabaidao and ALittle Tea, according to the report. (SD-Xinhua) | 