IF YOU think it’s hard work selling coal to Newcastle or ice to an Inuit, how about selling matcha to Japan?

That’s what China is hoping to do, as the biggest tea producer spots an opportunity in the worldwide craze for putting Japan’s richly-flavoured green tea powder into everything from lattes and cookies to cheesecake and KitKat bars.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK last month visited a factory in China’s Guizhou province that’s producing 2,000 tonnes of matcha a year, almost half of Japan’s annual output. China is already, by some measures, the bigger grower: Some 3,966 tonnes were processed in 2020, accounting for more than half the tea sold in a market valued at US$4.5 billion.