The Shanxi Herbal Tea Industry Technology Innovation Center was established on Dec 14 in Taiyuan city, capital of North China's Shanxi province.

The new facility is an initiative made by Shanxi's authorities to give full play to the role of science and technology in promoting the development of the province's herbal tea industry and to make Shanxi herbal tea a brand that is recognized around the world. 

Operated by Shanxi Tea Science Society, the center is staffed by a team of professionals in traditional Chinese medicine, tea, botany, food science and the natural sciences from universities, scientific research institutes and herbal tea companies. 

The center will carry out technical research and applications for the industry to meet the needs of consumers, provide technical support in processing technologies, quality and safety control, storage and preservation and herbal tea evaluation. 

It will also form a production-teaching-research consortium for Shanxi herbal tea, which will provide technological innovation and commercialization and related technical consulting services. 

The center will develop production-teaching-research cooperation platforms -- including herbal tea expert workstations and herbal tea technology innovation bases. By doing so, the facility will help the province to develop an entire industrial supply chain for herbal tea, ranging from production, research and development to sales. 

To date, the province has become home to more than 200 herbal tea processing enterprises which have developed over 260 kinds of blended and single-product teas, shaping product development, marketing and brand creation.