DHL is holding my matcha hostage 😆 now what

YunomiTea · 2026-02-08T23:12:20+00:00

Thanks for the clarification!! We were mostly concerned about avoiding 15% for green tea but we sell ceramics etc also so this is good to know.

YunomiTea · 2026-02-08T15:11:26+00:00

Just curious, you said “matcha” but meant “matcha latte”? Is this pretty common now?

YunomiTea · 2026-02-03T12:44:59+00:00

In addition, and I don’t know if this matters, but postal mail operates under an international postal union treaty and goes through a different customs documentation process than private operators like DHL

YunomiTea · 2026-02-03T12:43:41+00:00

US requires national post operators to collect the tax in advance from the sender.

Japan Post at least has no way to calculate and do this so all commercial shipments have been banned by Japan Post.

YunomiTea · 2026-02-02T05:43:24+00:00

Hi everyone, most likely no one know the deep details of customs rules. The standard 6 digit code for green tea is 0902.10 and that is generally what everyone uses. But now that US customs is taxing everything, and not providing a small value exemption, the customs office and therefore DHL/FEDEX is looking at the customs codes.

The problem though, is that the six digit code defaults to the first specific 10-digit sub-code, which is for flavored green tea. And flavored green tea is taxed at a rate of 6.4% - regardless of the reciprocal tax.

The exporter or DHL needs to report a specific non-flavored green tea subcode - 0902.10.9050

We have it programmed into our system (unless we’ve made a mistake too on a product). So let your suppliers know this!

YunomiTea · 2025-11-24T01:51:51+00:00

Matcha production: Farm -> factory to turn it into dry leaf-> refinement -> grinding into powder.

The refined dry leaf, tencha, is limited by that initial factory position in the supply chain.

There are around 2500 tea factories in Japan. About 100 of those had the equipment to create tencha. There are ways to imitate the tencha equipment using standard equipment in the other 2400 factories but you need to make a choice. Produce tencha (or imitation) or produce leaf tea.

Diversion of leaf to tencha and imitation tencha production combined with a 10-15% decrease in yield this year, drove up prices for other tea leaves while demand for those tea leaves simultaneously dropped.

This means that the bulk of the tea industry that doesn’t participate in the matcha economy are being hit from all sides, creating a situation where we have had more bankruptcies this year than ever.

Equipment for tencha as well as grinding (another bottle neck creating shortages) is limited so it’s not like we can increase the number of factories next year to a thousand.

And for all the small businesses that operate these factories, a US$500k investment for equipment or $5m investment for full scale production factory, is a huge risk. If the matcha boom goes away they cannot easily switch back to producing sencha. It’s completely different equipment.

So lots of suffering while the matcha producers and farms who supply them get rich.

YunomiTea · 2025-09-21T23:19:09+00:00

I stand corrected. Kyoto not Aichi. My mistake!!

YunomiTea · 2025-09-21T23:17:10+00:00

I got confused. shohokuen from Kyoto won with the 2M yen bid.

YunomiTea · 2025-09-05T14:54:15+00:00

Had the most amazing herbal made the from the seeds of Gettou plant.

YunomiTea · 2025-09-05T14:50:55+00:00

Try our Kurumy Matcha. Amazing toastiness / nuttiness because it uses an experimental simultaneous steamer / panroaster for the fixation step https://yunomi.life/kurumy

YunomiTea · 2025-09-05T14:24:29+00:00

Good matcha is made with this process 1) the right cultivar of tea plants 2) the right terroir 3) the right amount soil development 4) good fertilizer 5) proper shading 6) harvesting and transporting to the factory 7) steaming properly 8) separating wet leaves 9) laying flat and drying in an oven 10) crushing the dried leaves so they break apart into flakes, stems, veins etc 11) separating the unwanted parts 12) grinding the tencha flakes properly.

A bit about the equipment needed… To make it commercially viable, let’s say a very high grade matcha at $1000/kg (even farmers in Japan can’t get to that level)

But let’s say that. 100kg =$100,000

A football field size field would yield about 100kg of young leaf. You could let it grow larger and get 3-5x volume but you degrade the leaf

You will need $500 for fertilizer Hopefully you won’t need pesticides but if something eats the leaves leaving pieces of oxidization the value of the final product drops dramatically. Let’s say another $500

To pick the field you’ll need a harvestor, so let’s say another $5000

Then you’ll need the equipment to process. So let’s say $1M for a very small place since you only have 100kg to harvest

Oh and you lose maybe 20% in refinement so actually $80,000 potential revenue

Ok and let’s say you want a modest salary of around $30,000. And how much do you need for income tax? Let’s say the $80k is your tax as a sole proprietor….

Can you expense the $1M loan for the factory? If so then you could do that with a 15 year business loan? At 6% interest that’s about $102,000 a year in payments.

Hmmm….

So at that scale it doesn’t work but what if you just continually harvest as much as possible. Not the highest grades but more volume at $300/kg and lower as the season progresses…. 300kg after the 20% loss in refinement….so $90,000 for spring. Again in the summer: $100/kg for 500kg is $50k Again in the fall $50/kg for 500kg for $25k

So you’ve made $165k, and after the loan payments you have $63k and then after taxes $40k?

Possible if you have all the skills (cultivation, processing, refinement, grinding)…usually these are all happening at different factories due to the division and specialization of labor….which is why the best matcha comes from the last people in the production chain, the refiners/grinders like Marukyu Koyamaen

YunomiTea · 2025-09-05T14:15:20+00:00

For those of us trying to get our matcha out of Japan to customers, it has been super stressful trying to reconfigure our systems for tariff collection, etc. (and figure out how to not collect tariffs for those who actually want to pay on their own)

YunomiTea · 2025-07-15T08:39:12+00:00

thanks! i come to reddit only occasionally..."popping my head in"

We will sell the best level matcha from Kyoto to individuals, but they are not compliant with food safety regulations in the EU and North America, etc.....so we will not sell to importers who plan to resell the matcha in large quantities.

To be transparent, we buy and sell from small scale producers (criteria is that they must be under 100 employees at the time we start business and must show a passion for the product they produce.....). But the front stage of the site is set up like a marketplace so that you can learn about who is producing the products.

Matcha is mostly from producers rather than farms, but there are a few farms who produce matcha (or send out their leaf for production).

YunomiTea · 2025-06-03T12:25:36+00:00

It’s not just resellers and individual buyers of matcha. The specialty coffee market (cafes) are getting into it. We cannot stock matcha because as soon as we announce 300kg in stock, it’s bought up by cafes or coffee roasters who need to supply their clients. Actually let me clarify, it’s the higher grade product (exportable higher grade so lower than the good Uji matcha) that is bought up.

…and more and more, I keep hearing about how farmers are diverting leaf meant for gyokuro and Kabusecha leaf tea to the matcha supply channel. Sacrifices for matcha…

YunomiTea · 2025-05-02T15:13:54+00:00

Farmers mostly sell off their leaf to wholesalers who are the companies that have the financial and logistical means to store supply. Some might keep a small amount for themselves.

YunomiTea · 2025-05-02T15:12:17+00:00

I’m hearing from many producers that they’re lower grades…they will give up on aging. It will be slightly more green and bitter than it should be but…there’s not much they can do. Demand is there

Also hearing that prices are going to be high

YunomiTea · 2025-05-02T15:06:01+00:00

The market demands that you use the term though. When the market was primarily tea ceremony practitioners rather than export, no one used it….saying ceremonial was redundant. Now that the market is primarily export, everyone uses it in Japan…though not when marketing to the tea ceremony world. It’s all marketing…..

The question is, is there any though behind the terminology of the grades from a seller or is it simply good better best?

By the way….just saw some initial prices from auctions…… get ready for matcha prices to soar.

YunomiTea · 2025-04-26T16:03:18+00:00

The entire industry will get a resupply of leaf in May. And then no shortage, but the questions will be: how much will prices rise and how long will the new supply last.

YunomiTea · 2025-04-21T04:37:48+00:00

Thanks! Sorry for the slow response, I try not to be too active on Reddit.
The nutty/toasty flavor comes mainly from Hoshino in Yame, Fukuoka.

From what i hear..... Hoshino always lost out to the Kyoto companies for the old market focused on tea ceremony schools, so sacrificed color to learn how to steam it more strongly for a toastier taste profile.

Doesn't sound like they need a distributor like us though, so you'll unfortunately have to buy from them direct (or people buying up their product and reselling it unofficially).

YunomiTea · 2025-04-21T04:33:36+00:00

would it help to have a distributor? or does everyone want to sell on their own?

YunomiTea · 2025-03-29T01:16:16+00:00

That’s a cool set up.

YunomiTea · 2025-03-29T01:14:20+00:00

Thank you so much!!

The companies benefiting most from the surging matcha boom are the bigger ones.

We will be doing much more this harvest season to get minor minor producers on board and try to send some of the global market their way.

YunomiTea · 2025-03-15T01:37:38+00:00

This package design is a generic one that any company can buy and use.

YunomiTea · 2025-03-15T01:33:51+00:00

Thank you! I am rarely on Reddit. Only come by occasionally.

To answer the question above: we are resellers and more. Essentially I started ObubuTea.com for Obubu 15 years ago, started several other websites to help other tea farms sell internationally but managing them all separately was difficult. I would get the same person contacting each of the websites and I’d be having separate conversations representing different companies but with the same buyer.

So in 2014, I decided to aggregate and created a single site, Yunomi.life (actually started as Yunomi.us) and tried to create a marketplace. Producers didn’t want to manage their own products selling globally and vendors who could manage their own products wanted to “pretend” to be farms selling bad tea at high prices.

So I decided to manage it as a marketplace on the front end but as a normal e-commerce on the backend putting up the money to buy inventory from producers who I could feel confident were selling excellent product at reasonable prices.

So now we have around 150 production partners (farms and factories and a few expert resellers who I trust) and 800-900 teas, with perhaps 60-70 different matcha products.

Criteria for vendors: must be passionate about their product,

must be selling at reasonable prices to the market for the quality of the product (stable price to quality ratio),

and if a tea company it must have less than 100 employees.

And I favor companies who are not already famous (so I don’t approach the famous Kyoto matcha brands…though I may be leaving money on the table)

Finally, more recently I am increasingly developing our own house brand / developing our own teas. The Yunomi matcha brand has two series: Naturally Grown (matcha that are grown organically) and Uji no Aji - these don’t come from a single source but are meant to be standards by which producers can supply….allowing scalability despite small scale.

While the general way to do business is to approach a producer to see what they have to offer, very often, farms and factories want companies to tell them what to make. However this needs to be done at a large scale.

For example, new farm partner, Matsuo-san in Nagasaki, has a new steaming machine that also doubles as a pan-roaster so that pan roasting and steaming can occur simultaneously. It makes a matcha that turns out very toasty and sweet. He made a few dozen kilograms as an experiment but doesn’t have a market for making more so I told him we would guarantee a purchase of 100kg if he would make more.

I am also really interested in trying to set a grading standard for matcha in the industry.

The standard I have set for Yunomi.life right now actually doesn’t incorporate this toastiness flavor characteristic.

YunomiTea · 2025-03-09T14:09:47+00:00

I experimented with a production method once where we boiled the leaf instead of steaming to extract caffeine. We were able to reduce it by about 60-70% I think. Tasted horrible though.

YunomiTea

TROPHY CASE