Dubai to have world’s largest tea factory

Tea drinkers in Dubai are catching up with the UK, a world expert has claimed.

Exotic and organic teas could be the next big craze in Dubai, after a major manufacturer announced plans to have the world’s largest tea factory near the UAE city.

Visitors arriving on flights to Dubai are currently more likely to be served black tea than the milky English beverage, but Unilever is planning to shake things up with the expansion of the Jebel Ali tea-blending and packing plant, AFP reports.

The site is more than 1,000 miles from the nearest tea bushes in South Asia and East Africa, but despite this it is able to produce 1.1 million tea bags an hour.

Dubai is one of the biggest tea consuming nations in the world, just behind the UK and Ireland, and Unilever says that the rise of green tea in this region is proof that there is room for new flavours to be introduced.

Kurush Bharucha, Unilever’s world authority on tea, said: “Green tea was relatively unheard of 25 years ago in many Middle Eastern countries. But this has changed rapidly in the past five years.”

Written by Nicholas Scott