Typhoo is leading the way in addressing sexual violence in the tea industry. We are the first tea brand to tackle this issue by overhauling our system to prioritise the prevention of sexual violence. Instead of working with hundreds of ethically certified gardens, Typhoo now partners with a select few tea plantations that actively prevent and address violence and abuse. Our approach focuses on three key areas:

1. Ending sexual violence on tea plantations: women's safety is at the heart of all our business decisions. We founded the Fear Free Council to ensure we stay true to this commitment. A key part of this is working closely with the tea growers to identify safeguarding measures and provide support.

2. Revolutionising our supply chain: we identified a handful of trusted growers and are partnering closely with three tea plantations in East Africa that have the best practices in protecting women workers.

3. Funding women's safety: we pay higher prices to growers for raw tea, to ensure the sustainability of the plantations that are trying to stop violence against women. The Fear Free Council also funds initiatives and projects on tea plantations that empower women and work to eradicate the sexual violence many have experienced.

The funds that we dedicate to the issue of sexual violence in the tea industry are even more significant than a share of profits. They are a running cost of our business model - we pay $0.25 per kilo on top of higher tea prices. This means that Typhoo could potentially not make a profit in a given year, but our contribution to the cause would remain the same.

Typhoo belongs to the Ethical Trading Initiative and, through our Fear Free Council, we receive advice and support from specialised non-profits already dedicated to remediating violence against women on tea plantations (follow our blog for details on those).

However, the core of our funds is dedicated to stopping violence and harassment through projects that our partner growers have in place. These contribute to and support the great work farms are already doing in preventing sexual violence.

Of course! Please get in touch by contacting us at fearfreecouncil@typhoo.com if you have any suggestions or feedback.

Protocols for addressing sexual violence incidents on our partner plantations include:

1. Reporting: Either the victim-survivor reports the incident or farm workers to identify signs of abuse.

2. Investigation: Internal handling of harassment cases. Police involvement in violent abuse, such as rape.

3. Victim-survivor support: Hospital care, legal advice, counselling, assessment of working and living conditions for safety.

4. Systemic changes: Evaluation of the incident's cause and implementation of preventive measures (e.g., relocating workers closer to the factory).

5. Next steps for the alleged perpetrator: Suspension and removal from the plantation pending investigation, dismissal and conviction if guilty or reinstatement if found innocent.

6. Follow-up: Farm social workers ensure no retaliation against the victim-survivor.

If you're experiencing harassment in your workplace, there are steps you can take inside and outside of the organisation.

1. Understand your company's reporting process: Familiarise yourself with your workplace's harassment reporting mechanisms and assess the potential for retaliation.

2. Report the harassment: If you feel safe using your company's reporting system, do so. Remember that reporting harassment is a courageous act that can prevent others from experiencing the same treatment and contribute to changing workplace culture.

3. Seek external support: If reporting within your workplace doesn't feel safe, consider reaching out to government or charity services, such as:
Police

Your GP surgery Help after rape and sexual assault resources (NHS service)

Find your closest Rape and Sexual Assault Referral Centres (NHS service)

Workplace Bullying and Harassment (Gov.uk website)

Organisations such as rapecrisis.org with live chat and a hotline to provide remote support.

Good question. There are three ways you can help us to end sexual violence in tea:

1. By making other people aware of the issues within the tea industry (e.g. by sharing the BBC Africa documentary that highlighted these issues in 2023).
2. Ask the tea brands that you use regularly whether they are working with partner tea estates to tackle sexual violence within the tea industry.
3. Finally, you can buy Typhoo. The more of our tea you buy, the more of our profits we’re able to dedicate to the cause.

We’ve added 10% more tea to each Typhoo tea bag!

Tea strength isn’t all about steeping time. In fact, steeping a tea bag with less tea for an extended time can release oils and create a bitter taste. Our tea bags now contain more tea than many other brands, allowing you to enjoy a stronger, fuller flavour every time.

1. Skilled tea pickers harvest green leaves daily from well-maintained tea bushes.

2. The freshly picked green leaves are transported to a nearby tea factory.

3. At the factory, the leaves undergo a meticulous crush, tear, and curl process, transforming them into small black leaves suitable for tea bags. The quality of the tea bushes and leaves is crucial, but an excellent processing system is essential to extract the desired flavours and colours from the leaves.

4. Tea from three partner farms is blended according to an expert recipe to achieve the precise Typhoo flavor and color that you enjoy at home.

5. The loose black tea is packed into tea bags, each weighing 3.125 grams.

Our new tagline stems from the fact that we've now added more tea to the Typhoo tea bag to make sure our brew has a stronger and more satisfying taste. And, as we now work with three tea farms (instead of hundreds) we have more control over the blend and freshness of the taste of our tea.

You can buy Typhoo at any of the following retailers: Ocado, ASDA and Morrisons.

As we've improved the quality and taste of our tea, our prices have increased slightly. But, you'll be happy to know that we still cost less than the other tea brands you'll find in the supermarket.

Sexual violence on tea plantations is a significant problem, although the exact prevalence is unknown due to underreporting and a lack of comprehensive studies across tea-producing regions.

However, evidence from academic research, expert reports, court cases, and a recent documentary produced by BBC Africa Eye and Panorama suggests that sexual violence against women agricultural workers is pervasive in the tea industry. The BBC documentary, "Sex for Work: the True Cost of Our Tea," aired in 2023, found that 3 out of 4 women interviewed across several locations reported being abused by their managers or employment contractors. This alarming statistic, based on interviews with 100 women tea workers, highlights the widespread nature of the issue.

With 4 million people working on tea plantations out of the 13 million employed in the tea industry, and women constituting 30-60% of this workforce (depending on the country), it is estimated that between 1.2 and 2 million women working on tea plantations have experienced sexual violence.

In her TEDTalk, academic Marianne Cooper revealed that sexual violence is both a consequence and a cause of gender inequality and identified three organisational characteristics that create an environment conducive to sexual violence in the workplace:

1. Extreme hierarchies with significant power differences between levels, especially when the perpetrator controls the victim's future, finances, and safety.

2. Exclusion of women from senior positions, fostering a bystander culture.

3. Tolerance of bad behaviour, including victim-blaming, retaliation, and lack of consequences for perpetrators.

Traditionally, the tea industry has exhibited all three characteristics, with the first being the most challenging to address. Tea is often produced in regions with high levels of poverty and gender inequality, where slow economies, high unemployment, and low-paying jobs lead to power imbalances that ultimately contribute to the occurrence of sexual abuse.

Other tea companies can adopt similar initiatives by following the basic principles of Typhoo’s approach: Partnering with trusted plantations who share the company's values, and offering fair commercial terms, including competitive prices and long-term commitments, to support and reward these partnerships.

While this strategy may require significant investment and effort, it can lead to successful, sustainable relationships within the tea industry.

Anyone aged 18 or over can pick tea. The job market in the places we source from is not great, and the tea plantations we partner with pay some of the best wages in the region, so tea pluckers range from older men and women to young university graduates.

These days hand plucking is rare. Most of the tea consumed in the UK is plucked with sheers or harvester machines. The plucking system matters because the more mechanised, the bigger the quantity of leaves that a person collects in a day, and so the better the payment that they get. The minimum a plucker gets in a day, for the minimum daily wage (about 2GBP) is 50Kgs. Usually, it's around 70-90kgs/day, with people using harvester machines getting to 150kgs/day.

Once the green leaves have been plucked, they are transported to a tea factory nearby, where a very careful crush, tear, and curl process takes place. That's where those green leaves are turned into the small rolled black leaves we recognise as tea leaves that we know. The quality of the tea bushes and tea leaves is extremely important, but only if delicate handling and processing system gets the flavours and colours from the leaves.

There are a huge range of jobs, from very unskilled to extremely specialised, and all of them are done by both men and women (although women tend to be a minority in the more skilled jobs). Some of them are: Tea pluckers, field supervisors, field managers, factory workers, tea tasters, tea tasting assistants, engineers and so on). On top of these jobs, many of the people in the estate have a second responsibility as worker representatives in either the union or worker committees. There can be up to 80 committees per farm, by location or by function, covering things like women's progression in the workplace, management of cases of GBV, health and safety issues and more. These are very important functions as they help people complain about what's not right (from nursery facilities to serious cases of abuse) and escalate it to the right place so that help is provided.

Some of the tea that the tea factories process (and Typhoo packs) comes from nearby smallholder farmers that sell their leaves to [30-40% leave intake] bigger farms with processing capacity. Those smallholder farmers range from a few with huge holdings that hire up to 40 people as external help, to many really small gardens, just an acre, which they are plucked with family help (many times children after school or in holidays)

In some countries people live in villages near the tea estates, and work on the estates during the rainy months of the year when the tea bushes are growing. In other countries, people migrate to the tea estates to live in some housing provided by the farm, and rotate the gardens where they work and the place where they stay.

Healthcare is provided for workers by the grower, as well as schooling for their children. Hills and hills and hills of tea bushes are plucked daily by thousands of people, 8 hours a day in groups of 60 people or so.

The range of jobs that are necessary in this whole process is huge, from very unskilled to extremely specialised, and all of them are done by both men and women (although women tend to be a minority in the more skilled jobs). Some of them are: Tea pluckers, tea clerks, field supervisors, field managers, factory workers, tea tasters, tea tasting assistants, engineers and so on. On top of this, many on the estate are also representatives in either the union or worker committees. There can be up to 80 committees per farm, with by location or by function, covering things like women's progression in the workplace, management of cases of GBV, health and safety issues, assess and adress for grievances etc. These are important functions that help people complain about what's not right and escalate it to the right place so that help is provided.

Some of the tea that those tea factories process (and Typhoo packs) comes from nearby smallholder farmers that sell their leaves to bigger farms with processing capacity. Those smallholder farmers range from a few with huge holdings that hire up to 40 people as external help, to many really small gardens, which they are plucked with family help (many times children after school or in holidays).

Tea pickers' earnings vary based on the amount of tea leaves they harvest daily. The minimum wage for a picker is around 2 GBP per day, which requires them to collect at least 50 kg of tea leaves. On average, pickers gather 70-90 kg per day, while those using harvester machines can collect up to 150 kg daily.

Hand-picking has become less common, with most tea consumed in the UK being harvested using shears or machines. The level of mechanisation directly impacts a picker's daily collection and therefore their income.

Paying higher prices for tea helps support tea plantations that prioritise human rights and protect workers, especially women, from violence and exploitation.

The global tea market is highly commoditised, meaning that prices are set without considering the operational costs of individual tea plantations. As a result, tea prices can fluctuate and are set at increasingly low prices, while production costs such as electricity, fuel, and fertiliser continue to rise. This financial strain, coupled with the increasing cost of living for workers, has led to the closure of many tea plantations worldwide, resulting in job losses for thousands of workers.

By paying higher prices to selected partner tea plantations, we ensure the sustainability of those who are making significant progress in preventing and addressing sexual violence. Implementing systems to prevent and remediate such violence can increase production costs by 10% or more, particularly in countries without a strong welfare system where plantations have a greater responsibility for their workers' well-being. Our financial support guarantees that these tea plantations can continue to provide better jobs and protection for workers in the communities from which we source our tea.

Tea is mainly grown in Asia, Africa and South America. As it stands, the four biggest tea-producing countries are China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. Together they represent 75% of the worlds tea production and Africa is the biggest supplier of British tea.

While we believe that tea platations across the globe are failing to protect their female staff from experiencing sexual violence, the BBC Africa documentary (broadcasted in February 2022), is the first of it's kind to openly document and share statistics about this specific issue. As the documentary exposed the issues experienced on African tea estates (mainly in Kenya) we have referenced these locations to make sure the information we are sharing is accurate. As more information directly related to sexual violence on tea estates is uncovered across the globe, we will update our statistics, imagery and information to reflect this. Our illustrations, artwork and photography are therefore true to life, sensibly and thoughtfully curated, plus they help to maintain the anonymity of all of the women affected by this issue.