Matcha Menipis Stock, Production Crisis In Japan Impacts Up To Singapore

JAKARTA - Some time ago it was reported that Japan was experiencing a crisis in the production of matcha. This has now hit outside Japan.

Matcha is a green tea in powder texture, which makes it requires a long process. Over the past few years, matcha has been in great demand, especially for processed sweet foods and drinks, which turns out to have quite an impact on matcha stocks in Japan.

Citing the Mothership page, Thursday, November 21, 2024, the matchha crisis has an impact outside Japan, one of which is in Singapore. There are several matcha stores and beverage outlets in Singapore that have to temporarily stop selling matcha.

One of them is the Ippodo Tea drink outlet which is very famous for its matchmaking drinks. At the end of October 2024, this beverage outlet announced that it had stopped selling several menus made from matcha.

Dismissal had to be carried out because the match stock was insufficient for high buyer requests. The ongoing matchha crisis also makes the outlets do not know when they will get sufficient stock for the production of their matcha drink menu.

We are very sorry to inform you, we have stopped selling several products. Meanwhile, other products are still being purchased under the regulation that one buyer can only buy one matcha drink, "the announcement of the Ippodo Tea outlet.

In Singapore, demand for matcha is still quite high today. This has made several suppliers such as supermarkets start to increase the price of matcha products by 10 percent to 15 percent of normal prices.

Several stores selling matcha online in Japan, such as Maruku Koyamen, also made similar announcements. The store had to limit sales of matcha, as well as some products that were temporarily unavailable.

"Due to the high purchases of matcha in recent months, we have heavy heart to report that matcha products will be made limited from now on. Some matcha products will not be available," Maruku Koyamen announced.

Meanwhile, Sazen Tea, as the famous drink outlet in Japan, explained the real reason why Japan could experience the matchha crisis. It is said that producers have difficulty meeting the very high demand for matcha, because most of them are still producing it using traditional methods.

There is a lot of demand for matcha so that the producers find it difficult to meet market demand. This is because most of the matcha producers are small businesses that are run with traditional methods to maintain the quality of matcha, "said a representative of Sazen Tea.

In addition, the factors that make matchha rare because matchha comes from tencha tea leaves, which are quite rare in Japan.