Brewing Inequality: Sri Lankan Tea, Global Trade and the Struggle for a Just Transition

Every day, the UK drinks around 100 million cups of tea, with most people giving little thought to where it comes from, who picked it, or what it cost them to do so. Much of it travelled from Sri Lanka, one of the world’s largest tea exporters, where the workers and smallholders who grow it receive only a fraction of the value it generates by the time it reaches a supermarket shelf in the UK or Europe. The rest is captured further up the chain by manufacturers, brands and retailers, leaving producers trapped in a cycle of low prices, poor conditions and chronic underinvestment. 

This briefing traces that chain from the rainforests of Sri Lanka to the shelves of UK supermarkets and asks what a just transition would look like for the workers, farmers and ecosystems at the sharp end of it.

Download the briefing below.