Nigel Melican currently resides in Ireland and is semi retired. At the age of 83, he has been running his own tea consulting company over 30 years. He once worked as a product developer and trouble-shooter at Unilever Research. He was a botanist who accidentally entered the tea industry in the 1980s and worked in multiple tea producing countries to assist in establishing and improving tea factories. In 1990, Nigel opened his own tea consulting company Teacraft, which involved businesses in 31 countries on six continents, Asia, Africa, North and South America, Australia, and Europe. In 2018, he also led the establishment of the European Specialty Tea Association to promote multi-party connections in the tea industry chain. Nigel has focused his company’s efforts over the past decade on assisting small tea farmers and factories, and encouraging tea brands to develop international markets.
Nigel Melican has been made a centenary chair at the Tea Research Association of India
Since the early 1960s, as a product development and troubleshooting personnel at Unilever Research, Nigel has mainly studied leguminous plants and also worked as an agricultural consultant in the Middle East. In the 1980s, Nigel accidentally entered the tea industry and was sent to Papua New Guinea as a team project manager, responsible for providing on-site and factory technical inputs for tea quality improvement to third-party tea producers. He said that at that time, he had to brace himself to complete six months of work, studying and researching on his own to solve the problems in the tea production factory. Later, he received more similar work and cooperated with third-party tea companies in Kenya, Malawi, Turkey, Pakistan and Colombia on behalf of Unilever Research.
In 1984, Nigel first came to China to work, assisting third-party Chinese tea factories that collaborated with the international tea brand Lipton in establishing a production system for exported tea that met international standards. Upon receiving an invitation from the Chinese government, he will assist tea factories in China within 6 weeks, establish production lines, and process broken leaf tea according to international standards. Afterwards, he visited China multiple times, usually for internationally renowned tea brands in China’s tea regions, to trace some CTC tea products and so on. With decades of consulting experience, Nigel has gone from using expensive British tea machinery to trying out affordable Chinese tea machinery in recent years. He and his clients are both quite satisfied with the cooperation with Chinese manufacturers, and the work efficiency is very high.
In 1990, Nigel founded his own tea consulting company Teacraft, which has since accumulated a good reputation and credibility. Nigel has focused his company’s efforts over the past decade on helping small tea farmers and factories increase tea plantation production and improve tea quality, with discounted consultant fees available. Nigel is more interested in challenging work. For example, a recent consulting project is a small tea garden in the deep mountains of the the Himalayas close to Nepal. He also encourages more young people interested in tea to enter the tea industry and guide doctoral students. Due to the nature of his job, he often travels around the world. In the future, he hopes to work in countries closer to his place of residence in Ireland, such as some small tea gardens in France.
As early as 1986, Nigel planted three tea trees in his hometown of Ireland, which he plucks and hand makes a little Irish tea. He is a co-founder of the US League of Tea Growers and a member of the Tea Grown in Europe Association. In Europe, in 2018, Nigel, together with several founders, led the establishment of the European Specialty Tea Association and serves as its president. The non-profit membership association currently has over 350 members from 50 countries. The association aims to promote connections in the tea industry chain, linking tea gardens to experts and professionals in the tea value chain. For example, regularly holding online seminars, inviting leading figures in the tea industry to share online, participating in multi country tea events offline, and collaborating with research institutions. The association once organized a global tea tasting event to support International Tea Day, which raised 1200 euros to help women in tea growing communities receive education.
Nigel is not optimistic about non British tea brands entering the UK market that is dominated by supermarket giants. It has been difficult for British tea companies to open the local market, and foreign brands will only face greater challenges with significant upfront investment. There was once an Australian tea brand that attempted to open a store in the UK for promotion, but failed and switched to other European markets. Overall, Nigel recommends tea brands to first try out countries on the European continent or in the Americas. Although the tea market situation varies in each country, it is possible to start with small investments and develop different business models. For example, tea rich in selenium from Hubei, China, can be sold to countries in Europe that lack selenium, which should be a special selling point.
