Ready-to-drink or RTD teas have been at the core of product innovation innovation for many beverage firms in recent years, driven by a dual interest in tea products as well as convenience.
But whilst this is still growing at a rapid rate in most markets, industry experts in China believe that the country is fast approaching what the market deems the era of ‘RTD Tea 3.0’, meaning that consumers will soon have even more demands when making beverage purchases.
“Over the past two decades we have seen RTD teas evolve in several stages - first was RTD Tea 1.0 in 2005 when flavoured teas were all the rage, then RTD Tea 2.0 in 2015 when consumers starting looking for less sugar or zero sugar teas,” Tasly Great Health Industry Chairman Kaijing Yan told the floor at the recent Food and Beverage Innovation Forum (FBIF) 2025 in Shanghai.
“Now in 2025, we are rapidly moving into the era of RTD Tea 3.0 which is essentially functional teas - but specifically for RTD teas, this means teas that are no longer just zero or less sugar, but instead now must be able to help consumers to actively reduce their blood sugar.
“This evolution comes from our entry into a new era of science and branding, where more consumers are aware of the scope for functionality in the products they purchase so are keen to get the most value out of these purchases.”
This development has also been driven by local government policies including China’s Healthy China 2030 strategy launched in 2018, targeting the reduction of blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol.
“There is a clear shift towards focus on metabolic health because we know that may public health issues today stem from this area, such as diabetes and cardiac diseases,” Xingyun Group Chairman Wei Yang added.
“As the government continues to focus on areas such as weight management, such as with the ‘Year of Weight Management’ this year, there is a lot more opportunity for RTD teas to grow along with the evolving consumer needs in this area.”
Future directions
As such, Wei believes that the next step towards growth for this sector is to focus more strongly on the science behind developing new ingredients that can be used in RTD Tea 3.0 products.
“Right now the demands for health and emotion management are high in China, and RTD teas are an excellent delivery format, but the issue is that the quality of science and R&D we have to back up the products is still not yet fully adequate today as many new promising innovations still lack clinical studies.
“A good example is pu’er tea, which is a very common tea drank by many in China as a regular tea since, a practice that has been ongoing for thousands of years since ancient times.
“There were findings over the years about this tea being able to help with weight reduction and cholesterol reduction, but only have scientists found enough information regarding the mechanism for these benefits and that it is linked to the gut microbiota.
“So moving forward, what China’s tea industry really needs to do is look at more research as well as at the area of personalisation, testing consumers to see what functional benefits should be focused on based on local needs and then investing into these areas.”
