Jan 2026

Hope you are having a great start to the year. Just wanted to quickly provide you with an update as we closed out the year. January has been super busy, as always, with creating growth plans and budgets for the year, and I’m finally getting some time to reflect on 2025.
 
First and foremost, I want to thank you for supporting Nepal Tea Collective’s growth and impact last year.

2025 Overview
 
Two Acquisitions and One Clear Direction
 
Early on, we made a bet that defined the year. Build a Blend in the US became one of our most important decisions and a key part of where we have taken the company. Through this vertical, we have been able to support 25+ brands with private-label offerings. We also made our second acquisition in Nepal, acquiring a 20-year-old packaging and fulfillment company.
 
With machinery, inventory, a seasoned team, and long-standing customers across Nepal and Europe, this move transformed us into a full-stack tea company spanning retail, private label, blending, tea bagging, and wholesale. With a team of 55, it also unlocked access to the European  and APAC tea market.
 
B Corp, Awards, and Quiet Validation

Becoming B Corp certified with a score of 114.3 was one of those moments where you pause and realize we are doing something right. It is not perfect, and there is still so much more to fix, but being validated by one of the most rigorous certification bodies in the world felt grounding.

FDI, Ownership, and the Collective Mindset

Completing our FDI process was another milestone that may not look flashy from the outside but fundamentally changed our future. NTC USA now formally and legally owns 73% of NTC Nepal, with the remaining ownership held by founders and employees. We also converted most of our employees into shareholders through an Employee Stock Investment Plan. Collectively, our team now owns roughly 9 percent of the company. This was never a nice-to-have, it was intentional. This has always been a collective, and now it is structured like a real one.

Impact Did Not Pause, It Adapted

When USAID was formally lost, UKAID stepped in within months, allowing us to continue advancing our herbs and spices processing capabilities. What I am most proud of is that we did not lay off a single person. Instead, we reorganized, reassigned, and adapted, proving to ourselves that resilience is not reactive panic, but quiet problem-solving.
 
We also formally launched our Impact Club to ensure that impact never gets lost in the day-to-day execution of the business. Because of this structure, we are now on track to distribute close to $20,000 directly to farmers in the coming months. If you’d like to estimate your company’s direct impact, simply total all the teas you purchased from us and multiply by 1%.

What’s happening recently at Nepal Tea Collective?
 
North East Tea Festival
 
We’re back with the second edition of the North East Tea Festival on August 22nd. Our first festival was a huge learning experience, and this year we’re excited to improve and elevate the experience for everyone attending. Last year, we had about 850+ attendees who came in during the festivals and enjoyed teas from about 25 vendors.

Featured in "101 Teas to Steep Before You Die" and The Leafies 
 
Huge thanks to Nigel Melican, James Norwood Pratt, Maria Uspenski from The Tea Spot, and Shabnam Weber for reviewing Kumari Gold and for believing it was special enough to be included in the book. We’re also incredibly grateful to the UK Tea Academy and Fortnum & Mason’s Leafies Awards for recognizing White Prakash as a Commended White Tea.
 
Both of these teas are very dear to my heart. They are dedicated to my grandmother, whose middle name was Kumari, and my grandfather, whose middle name was Prakash. They were the first to plant a tea bush in our backyard in the 1980s. What began as a single plant has since grown into a 253-acre tea garden.

What's happening at the farm in Nepal? 
 
Herbs and Botanicals Production 
 
Production of ginger, turmeric, black cardamom, lemongrass, chamomile, and yacon is well underway. As you all know, tea production in Nepal typically ends in October, and our team has been focused on maintenance work since then. December marked the start of full-scale processing of the herbs and botanicals across our portfolio. We are seeing ever-growing demand for these herbs and botanicals coming out of Nepal, and this year was a key moment where we scaled production significantly to meet that demand.

Pruning and Manuring
 
Pruning work has largely been completed across the farms, mostly light skiffing, with some plots also undergoing deep skiffing. In addition, a few plots that have seen consistently declining yields over the past several years are being uprooted and replanted with new bushes.
 
One exciting development this year is that all 66,000 bushes will receive 5 lbs of manure each, with applications beginning on February 1st. I’ll share more updates on how this is progressing in our next email.

Organic Certification
 
We have finally completed our renewal application for organic certification, and all of our farms are currently working through the same process. In parallel, we are also certifying our processing and packaging facility in Nepal under ISO 22000, and a significant amount of documentation and paperwork is currently underway.

We’ll be back soon with more updates and stories from Nepal.