It is a little-known irony that one of the poorest and least developed nations of the world, namely the East African country called The Republic of Mozambique (or simply Mozambique), is home to the largest organic tea plantation in the world called Cha de Magoma. This tea plantation supplies many brands, including the fastest growing brand of iced tea, increasingly popular among health-conscious and sustainability-minded American consumers.
Founded by the Portuguese colonists in the 1930s, the massive plantation in the northern part of the country was abandoned after the civil war that raged between communists and anti-communists, following Mozambique’s independence from Portugal. The plantation is located in Zambezia Province – a region at the epicenter of Mozambique's tea industry, featuring some of the largest tea plantations and processing facilities in the country.
Moreover, Zambezia's favorable climate, with its high altitude, adequate rainfall, and rich soils, creates optimal conditions for tea cultivation.
Cha de Magoma was acquired in 2012 by Hemant Jalan, in quite deteriorated condition having been forsaken since the Mozambique civil war. Jalan is the cousin of its present-day majority shareholder, Mohit Agarwal, who was given a majority stake in the garden by Jalan to be managed under Agarwal’s company, Asian Tea Group Ltd.
The Portuguese and Tea in Mozambique
For centuries, Portugal's African territories (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe,) served mainly as stopovers on the route to Asia for gold, ivory, and slaves, rather than centers for tea production. Their empire lasted from 1470 to 1975, making it both Europe’s first and last colonial enterprise.
Even until the very end, coercive labor, racial discrimination, authoritarian politics, and economic exploitation characterized Portuguese rule. As in other colonies, the exploitation led to the independence movement of the 1960s and 70s, culminating in a war that lasted eleven years, leading to Portugal’s ouster in 1975.
However, without the Portuguese, there likely would have been no tea in Mozambique. They first exported Chinese tea in the 16th century from their port in Macau, introducing it to Europe. Indeed, England might never have taken to it – had it not been for the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, who married King Charles II of England in 1662, bringing her fondness for the beverage with her and making it fashionable at the English court.
Cultivation was first undertaken in the late 1800s but focused on the Azores in Europe, closer to home. These islands in the Atlantic Ocean still hold the oldest European tea plantations. By contrast, other colonial powers such as the British had founded commercial plantations in several African countries, including Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania – all by the mid-1920s. This led the Portuguese to do the same. Cha de Magoma was carved out of the remote and lush landscape of northern Mozambique in the 1930s.
It didn’t take long before tea became a key export crop for colonial Mozambique, alongside cotton, sugar, and cashew, as part of a focus on agricultural products. By 1950, Mozambique was exporting more tea than any other African nation – including Kenya – led by their popular brand Chá Moçambique. Tea evolved into a vital part of their colonial economy, with towns like Gurúè (the closest town to Cha de Magoma) developing in an elite tea district, complete with amenities and private air travel to Gurúè.
So, the people of Mozambique had been involved in tea cultivation for decades when political turbulence caused most to gravitate away from normal life.
Even after a democratic government took root when the post-colonial Marxist dictatorship was vanquished in 1994, Cha de Magoma remained abandoned because by then neglect had made it seemingly unviable. The bushes had overgrown, and had spread throughout the plantation. The factory had been looted, left a skeleton of what the Portuguese had built. It remained in the hands of the government while it focused on stabilizing the country contenting with its dire poverty (the nation remains the fourth poorest country in the world).
It wasn’t until Indian trader, Hemant Jalan came to Mozambique, fell in love with the area, and developed a vision for rejuvenating this obscure but scenic enclave. So, he bought the estate causing the fate of Cha de Magoma to turn a corner.
Enter Mohit Agarwal and his Asian Tea Group
Jalan’s cousin, Mohit Agarwal is part of a newer breed industry movers and shakers. “The World of Tea is changing,” he says. People are interested in more fruit flavored teas, infusions, and single estate teas – the same for tea-based beverages: one the most prominent clients of Cha de Magoma is Just Ice Tea, which is run by Seth Goldman and celebrity chef Spike Mendelsohn of Eat the Change Inc. (Goldman was the founder of Honest Tea, which was bought by Coca-Cola and then shuttered due to logistical issues post-Covid-19).
Pic 3 – Caption: Mohit Agarwal, Managing Director of Asian Tea Group Ltd. in conversation via Zoom with SB Veda. The Kolkata-based businessman is a global tea entrepreneur and majority stake holder in Cha de Magoma – photo by SB Veda
Agarwal understands global tea trends, having been in the industry since the early nineties – his first major undertaking was to set up a packaging center in Coimbatore, South India for another company. He founded Asian Tea Group after that experience, which he describes as a tasting, packing, and exporting company. They were the first Indian company to source tea from non-Indian origins beginning with Sri Lanka, then Kenya, Rwanda, and ending up with a footprint that extends to some 40 countries. He supplies companies like Twinings but his company’s name is nowhere to be seen.
“We are basically a back-office operation for our clients,” he says. “We don’t compete against our buyers, and we avoid branding for that reason. We simply we look after the product in the raw materials, source it, blend it, pack it, have quality controls, correct price, and give them a ready product to pack and market and brand,” Agarwal asserts.
The Transcendence of Cha de Magoma
Although, Agarwal’s company also owns a plantation in Assam, India, acquiring a majority stake in Cha de Magoma was a watershed moment that brought new potential for Asian Tea Group.
Having been converted by ATG into the largest organic tea estate in the world with 2650 hectares under cultivation from around 8000 hectares of land (that’s almost 6,550 acres under cultivation from close to 20,000 acres of land) the estate is massive compared to many.
When Agarwal’s cousin, Jalan, bought the plantation in 2012, he had started to run it conventionally.
“Actually, all the groundwork and the hard work was done by him,” Agarwal graciously admits. “I did the easier part.”
With no industrial activity around the plantation for over 50 miles, and having been abandoned for so long, it made sense to convert it to certified organic. However, it took Agarwal’s involvement to convince Jalan of the viability of such a plan.
“I mean, all credit to him [Jalan] for having the eye to buy a plantation in such an obscure area, and then to bring it to the stage where I saw it…The factories are done up, the plantations are pruned. My job was then to go through the 3-year cycle which you require for organic conversion,” Agarwal recounts.
Initially, Agarwal had come to the plantation just to help his cousin. He had been going to Kenya on roughly a quarterly basis for his export business, and the nearest airport to the plantation in Nampula, Mozambique, was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight away from Nairobi as Agarwal recalls.
Agarwal recounts the journey: “The estate manager came to pick me up in the airport, and we drove straight to the estate. It was a little over a 6-hour drive - but beautiful roads, and I couldn't understand where am I reaching…where am I going. I reached Cha de Magoma just before sunset, maybe about 4.30 or something – and, I saw one of the most incredible landscapes and plantations which I've ever seen even though by then, I’d been in tea for close to twenty years. It was unimaginable,” Agarwal describes.
He adds: “So I spent a week there, analyzing the bushes, analyzing the soil, analyzing the plantation…and I thought, you know, whatever they were doing is all wrong, and what needs to be done is to convert this into the world’s largest organic tea plantation.”
Agarwal took soil samples and had them assessed in a lab back home in Kolkata. He was amazed to find the carbon content to be off the charts. “People thought it [the soil sample result] was doctored,” Agarwal recalls. In addition, the pH was 4.5, mildly acidic – within the ‘sweet spot’ for tea cultivation.
“The plantation was ideal for organic cultivation because it’s in the middle of nowhere, like an island, within the mainland, surrounded by nothing but just forests and mountains,” Agarwal says, adding: “There is no other plantation which is attached to it. And there was no chance of any pest infestation here from any neighbor.”
When Agarwal returned to sit down and report his findings, expressing his opinion about what should be done with the plantation, he elicited a rather unexpected reaction: “He [Jalan] put his hands up, he said, ‘Look. I am, now old, and I don't have the strength in the legs to do all this running to convert an estate into a state which is nearly 8,000 hectares…of which, about 2,500 is under tea to organic. And, if you feel you can make a name out of it, take the keys. And he got off from his table and said, from today, you run it.”
The pair made a deal to transfer majority stake to Asian Tea Group. (Jalan still maintains a minority stake and remains a partner in the venture.)
Development of an Organic Powerhouse in Agriculture
The plantation has attained certifications including UTZ, Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, USDA, Japan’s JAS, India’s NPOP. Now, they are planning on Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC), which their large US buyer, Just Ice Tea wants them to obtain.
Since Cha de Magoma is located south of the equator, the season begins in November, and ends in June when winter is about to set in. While tea plucked during November tends to be more flavorful and aromatic with weather corresponding to spring-like conditions, tea cultivated in the remaining months, particularly when rainfall is more abundant, has a more standard consistency, according to Agarwal. Their teas are varied and can produce mild to strong cups with different notes – but are generally described as smooth and clean tasting. Plucking is continuous, i.e., there are no ‘flushes.’
Demand for such teas increased with plantation becoming better known. As the business grew, success came in the form of becoming one of the largest employers in the entire country, employing over six thousand people.
This garnered no small measure of local attention. “The government identified two other estates, which were similarly abandoned, and they said, ‘You just take them over and employ people there,’” Agarwal says. These estates comprise Monte Metille and Monte Branco both of which in addition to traditional African CTC teas, have become known for producing rare orthodox teas. Monte Branco also makes green tea.
Cha de Magoma not only makes tea, but it also has 1,500 hectares under Eucalyptus cultivation, which is used in herbal products, and 500 hectares of citronella, the essential oil of which acts as a natural insect repellant.
“We have a lot of virgin land for us to do trials. We are doing trials with spices: ginger, turmeric… we have produced our own honey,” says Agarwal.
Critical to their certifications is the large amount of organic grazing land for cattle of which they have two hundred head. The cows feed on the organic grass, and hence, excrete organic dung and urine that is used for organic fertilizer.
Organic mulch is also made by composting vegetation of which they make around 5 metric tonnes per year, which is also used to feed the soil. With around 6000 Hectares of green cover planted, which includes citronella, Guatemala grass, and neem, the plantation has plenty of ingredients for composting.
“So, these are the advantages which, we have, which are not possible to have anywhere else,” says Agarwal
The Community of Cha de Magoma
Agarwal also notes that, unlike plantations in other countries where the younger generation growing up in and around tea plantations isn’t interested in plucking tea like their forbears, in Mozambique, there is no shortage of labor.
“It’s quite the opposite,” he says. “They don’t have a modern economy, so agriculture still offers opportunities, unlike other countries, which have placed more of an emphasis on so called development. So, there is a lot of very skilled labor available – and they’re not only skilled, they’re also good people.”
As a result, almost all plucking is done by hand. They only occasionally use sheers.
In addition to the Fair Trade premium, which has helped finance a school, a community center, and an ambulance, clients like Goldman have independently raised money to establish a pathological lab to test for Malaria and blood ailments, which normally go untreated there.
The Mystique of Mozambique
For those buyers who’ve visited this breathtaking plantation, Cha de Magoma, seems to have cast a spell on them. The more they engage with the plantation, the more invested they become in its success and development of the community surrounding it.
“We have Clipper [Clipper Teas], who are the largest organic tea brand in Europe, by far, doing the same kind of work which Seth is doing,” Agarwal says. “James and Dan, [James Ikin and Daniel Parr] who are the tea buyers are huge supporters of the tea and the people of Cha de Magoma.” (Actually, Ikin is responsible for ethical sourcing and Parr is more involved in blending – but both do visit plantations.)
“We have a strategic partnership with Wollenhaupt, in Germany [a tea wholesaler], which is a family company owned by Dirk and Jörg Wollenhaupt,” Agarwal adds. Dirk is focused on tea while Jörg handles the other side of their business, which is vanilla.
“They believe in the community; they believe in the product. They believe in organic,” emphasizes Agarwal. “They use our teas in their catalogues and their blends.”
Cha de Magoma’s relationship with Germany is growing. They also do business with OTG [Ostfriesische Tee Gesellschaft], a wholesaler with a reputation for supporting sustainable tea cultivation.
“Talking about OTG, Annemarie, who's the Managing Director of OTG, is herself a big, big supporter of Cha de Magoma. And I must mention, and you also must mention in your article, Annemarie Leniger is the first woman MD of a large tea company to visit, spend a lot of time with the community of Cha de Magoma,” Agarwal says.
“When our buyers come to visit, they spend time – a week, 10 days with the people and the workers – and they do all great work,” Agarwal emphasizes.
Cha de Magoma's Success
It’s not just ethical sourcing, sustainability, and goodwill that is driving Cha de Magoma’s success. Mozambique’s economic situation makes the cost of production low compared to companies operating in developing or developed countries where wages and demands for benefits in the labor force are far higher. So it’s viable for Agarwal to price the plantation’s organic tea in the same range as conventional tea, giving it a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
“So, with Touchwood, with God's grace, we [are] always oversold, and we don't have a problem of marketing or selling our teas. Our teas are very accepted and doing extremely well.”
Outlook for the Plantation
On top of its revival, what is so encouraging about the Cha de Magoma is its potential. With just over a quarter of total land under cultivation, it leaves Agarwal with many options for further development.
Tea tourism is on the rise, globally, but becoming very expensive at popular tea gardens in where luxury resorts and hotels have been constructed. The natural beauty of Northern Mozambique combined with its bargain economy makes Cha de Magoma, perhaps, an ideal location for an affordable tea tourism resort. The location could not only offer a unique experience but also one that can be managed within a reasonable budget.
Organic farming has already begun on areas absent tea bushes. It’s in the emerging stages but investing in agricultural development and diversifying the crops would offer another revenue stream and the added biodiversity would only enhance the soil.
“Having begun with ginger and turmeric, we want to expand our offerings of organic herbs and spices and flowers as well as begin cultivating fruits,” Agarwal says. He also says there is much potential for expanding their green tea production, demand for which is growing, worldwide.
As such plans come to fruition, this once neglected part of Mozambique may help pull the struggling nation out of poverty by impacting multiple areas of the economy. One day Cha de Magoma may be at the centre of what people might call the Mozambique Miracle – and it all would have started with tea.
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