1.Harvesting
Starting in early April, the tea leaves are picked by hand for more traditional craft teas or by machine for the majority of tea production. After that, the leaves are transported to the plant for further processing. After harvest, in order to keep the leaves fresh until further production, they are gathered and stored in a containers where air is circulated.
2.Steaming and Cooling
The leaves are put into a large steaming machine and steamed for different lengths of time, depending on the type of tea produced. The cooling machine then cools down the leaves while also removing surface moisture. This is done in order to preserve their green colour, or chlorophyll, in the leaves.
3.Primary Drying
In order to soften the tea leaves, dry hot air is blown on them while the machine’s arms continuous kneading and rubbing motion twist and squeeze the leaves with moderate pressure in order to extract moisture. The circulating air then allows the leaves to dry further until the moisture reaches about 50%.
4.Rolling /Twisting
A machine equipped with a rotating weight surrounded by brushes presses the leaves to help break down the cell walls, bring out the moisture and obtain an overall even level of moisture. The rolling also helps release more flavour from the leaves.
5.Secondary Rolling and Drying
At this stage the leaves are tumbled in a rotating drum where the machine arms move around to separates the leaves that are clumped together. During this stage, the leaves are also heated and dried. At the end of this stage, moisture level is around 30%.
6.Final Rolling
The leaves are pressed and rolled in order to shape them into tiny, thin needles while hot air is blown on them. At this stage, moisture level is around 13%.
7.Final drying
Leaves are fed to the machine up a conveyor belt and dropped onto stacked troughs below. These troughs are equipped with conveyor belts and hot air is blown on the leaves as they travel to the end of each belt and drop down to the trough below, continuing back and forth and down each stack until they reach the end of the final belt and come out of the machine. At this stage, moisture content is about 5%.