2 May 2012

Hawaii company strikes luxury tea deal

12:41 pm on 2 May 2012

A tea grown in Hawaii is stirring up talk, after signing an exclusive deal with the luxury retailer, Harrods of London.

Honolulu Magazine reports Big Island Tea just sold its first crop of tea to Harrods for about 10,000 US dollars a kilogram.

The co-owner, Eliah Halpenny, says it's the second year of selling the tea, both green and black, and only the second year of harvesting the crop.

She says she's now growing with a group that is all farming tea sustainably, and will probably market together.

"This tea that we're planting now, if it were cared for, could be, generations down the line, picked. Same bushes, as long as it were cared for, and it would be a sustainable crop. Unlike sugar cane that comes in and just gouges out the earth, and has to be burnt, this is the same plant that will keep producing."

Eliah Halpenny of the Big Island Tea company.