A launch conference for Shanxi medicinal tea takes place in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, on March 20. [Photo/Shanxi Daily] 

A launch conference for Shanxi medicinal tea was held in Taiyuan, capital of China's North Shanxi province on March 20, promoting and releasing regional public brands of Shanxi medicinal tea, according to local officials. 

Representatives of pharmaceutical companies, tea companies and tea merchants from Guangdong, Yunnan, and Zhejiang provinces, as well as from Beijing and Chongqing attended the conference to get to know more about the unique charms of Shanxi medicinal tea. 

In recent years, Shanxi province has adopted its medicinal tea industry as an important driver for the development of local modern special agriculture and formed six major production areas, including forsythia leaf tea production bases in the Taihang Mountains and Taiyue Mountain and Lycium barbarum bud tea and Astragalus membranaceus tea production bases in Hengshan Mountain. 

The province has seen the influence of Shanxi medicinal tea expand with product development, marketing and the brand creation of medicinal tea beginning to take shape. There are now hundreds of medicinal tea processing enterprises in the province, which have developed more than 200 kinds of medicinal tea and registered 92 brands. 

Early this February, the Shanxi provincial government issued a circular on developing 10 industrial clusters for the intensive and deep processing of agricultural products, which included the development of medicinal tea industrial clusters.

The section on medicinal tea in the circular proposed initiatives in seven fields, such as construction of standardized production bases, the development and expansion of beverage processing enterprises, the establishment of a beverage standardization system and promotion of medicinal tea. 

According to the circular, Shanxi will set up 20 square kilometers of medicinal tea plantations which will adopt mechanized operations and standardized management. 

The province plans to further develop a group of existing medicinal tea companies and traditional Chinese medicine companies into the backbone of a local medicinal tea industry -- and introduce a group of noted medicinal tea companies from other provinces to improve the province's medicinal tea intensive processing levels. 

As for establishment of a beverage standardization system, Shanxi will build a quality traceability platform for the entire industrial chain of the province's medicinal tea industry. 

To further enhance brand influence and the market share of Shanxi medicinal tea, the province will attract and recruit talent strong in beverage marketing. It will also include Shanxi's medicinal tea brands on a promotions list, to market Shanxi brands through a series events including the Shanxi Brands Silk Road -- and promote medicinal tea products at expos and fairs as well as on e-commerce platforms. 

According to the plan, the annual output value of the Shanxi medicinal tea industry in the province is expected to top 1 billion yuan ($140.52 million) at the end of 2025 -- by which time one or two leading national medicinal tea brands will be flourishing.