From leaf to your cup
Our responsibility begins at the source of our teas.
We know that we can only offer the best quality teas if we already treat our valuable resources with care and protect our natural environment today. The basic requirements for this are healthy soils, unspoilt climate conditions and living and working conditions that secure people’s livelihoods in the tea-growing area. Come with us to the roots of our teas and find out what the many challenges to be overcome for sustainable economic activity.
The many branches of our supply chain.
The sustainability of our products is important for us. This also means that every stage our teas go through must be thoroughly checked. From their origins right through to you in your teacup.
The Tea Plant
The basis of our teas are the more than 200 types of plant that we source from over 90 different countries.
We source our black teas and green teas directly from the countries where they grow, whereas we buy herbal and fruit infusions from suppliers in Germany.
Maintaining this variety is a key objective in our sustainability efforts.
The Cultivation
Our raw ingredients come from various different crop types: from tea plantations, from fields and from wild harvesting.
To protect the natural environment, we take special care to maintain and improve the ecological conditions and the biodiversity both in the fields and where the harvesting is done from the wild.
The Processing
It is important for us that our social standards are met and that the preparation of raw materials is sustainable in our tea factories and processing sites.
For us this includes improving the workers’ living conditions, but also regular further training and development in the factories and their workers for quality assurance purposes.
Our Partners
Together with our Ethical Tea Partnership and UTZ (Part of the Rainforest Alliance) partners, we are committed to ensuring that our strict demands are kept for sustainable products, protecting the environment and appropriate working conditions in the tea-growing region.
Together we initiate projects and campaigns that improve the living conditions directly in the area.
As it is our objective to ensure good living conditions and working conditions for the people involved in the production of our teas.
Suppliers and Transport
Our suppliers are important partners in the realisation of our endeavour to use 100% sustainable raw ingredients.
They help us realise our standards on site in the regions where the tea comes from.
Transport routes are also an important factor, which is why we import a large proportion of our tea by ship – where we also take care to avoid any unnecessary packaging material.
Responsible Production
Our commitment to a sustainable product does not end when the tea reaches Europe. We also like to blend and pack our teas in an environmentally friendly and energy-efficient way. So we have deployed 100% green energy in all our production sites and in our administration in Germany since 2015.
In 2014, we also implemented a DIN 50001 energy management system to reduce our energy consumption. In that process we changed the lighting in the production and logistics areas to LEDs operated through movement sensors and we use energy-efficient drives for our compressors.
We offset all the CO2 emissions that we cannot yet avoid in cooperation with ClimatePartner, with compensation payments to international climate protection projects in India and Rwanda.
Distribution
We work in close partnership with the retail trade – supermarkets, drug store chains and other shops – so we can implement a broad range of sustainability strategies across all sales channels.
The Retail Trade
We work in close partnership with the retail trade – supermarkets, drug store chains and other shops – so we can implement a broad range of sustainability strategies across all sales channels.
Our Customers
We use all our expertise and a great deal of passion to develop really special tea varieties. And it’s only when our customers are sustainably satisfied that are we satisfied too.
That is why we are even happier that we can offer our customers a full range of sustainably cultivated products.
Enjoyment with Meßmer means enjoying greater sustainability with each cup.
Recycling
We are also aware of our responsibility towards the natural environment in our packaging.
That is why we exclusively use recycled material in our paper folding boxes and no-longer use metal staples on our teabags.
This means that our packaging can be recycled when disposed of in the waste paper and our teabags can be composted.