一场洪水 冲垮了茶饮品牌的“茉莉花基地”

Floods have hit Hengzhou, Guangxi, submerging tens of thousands of acres of jasmine fields and directly disrupting jasmine raw material supplies across China and globally. Most major Chinese tea beverage brands rely on Hengzhou for their jasmine supply. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Hengzhou is the world's core jasmine production region, supplying 60% of global output and over 80% of China's domestic jasmine. Major brands including Luckin Coffee, Chagee, Mixue Ice City, Nayuki and Starbucks all source their jasmine from here. The floods have submerged more than 100,000 acres of jasmine fields, halting the entire supply chain including picking, processing and transportation.

2. Supply status varies across brands: Molinaitalk has explicitly stated it has sufficient inventory and will keep prices stable across all its stores without increases. Most other brands have only publicly announced donations to the disaster area and have not responded to questions about their raw material inventory.

3. Outlook: If floodwater does not recede within a week, jasmine plants will rot and die. Even if they recover, this year's jasmine output and quality will decline. It is highly likely that jasmine raw material prices will rise and supplies will fall short in the coming period, so consumers should prepare for this in advance.

The Hengzhou floods act as a stress test for new-style tea beverage supply chains, offering valuable insights for brand operations and supply chain strategy. Key takeaways for brands are as follows:

1. Short-term impact: The entire Hengzhou jasmine supply chain has been disrupted, and industry raw material inventories are running low. In the short term, the sector will face tight jasmine supply, rising costs and declining quality. Brands should prepare in advance for pricing adjustments and public relations responses.

2. Core exposed issues: To control costs and maintain consistent quality, most brands have concentrated their direct supply bases in Hengzhou, leading to extreme over-reliance on a single production region and very weak risk resilience. Furthermore, most brands lack comprehensive multi-region inventory plans and post-disaster procurement contingency protocols.

3. Long-term optimization directions: Brands need to adjust their supply chain strategy, advance multi-region sourcing while maintaining quality standards, and establish emergency finished dried tea reserve mechanisms in advance. They can also follow the examples of brands like Molinaitalk and Mixue Ice City by donating to the disaster area to fulfill social responsibility and boost brand reputation.

The Hengzhou jasmine floods bring clear risks and opportunities for terminal tea beverage sellers. Key insights are as follows:

1. Risk warning: After the disaster, jasmine raw material supply will gradually tighten, and upstream prices are highly likely to rise. If floodwater remains for an extended period, there could even be a complete failure of jasmine harvest in the second half of the year, which will directly hit the revenue of stores that focus on jasmine-based products.

2. Mitigation measures: Sellers should immediately contact upstream suppliers to confirm their own raw material inventory, lock in raw material prices in advance to avoid losses from future cost increases, sort out current inventory early, and prepare contingency plans for potential stockouts.

3. Opportunity outlook: Sellers can adjust their in-store product mix ahead of time, increase promotion of non-jasmine beverages, prepare communication explanations in advance for consumer questions about possible price hikes, and use this event to conduct product education and promote their other flavor offerings to diversify store revenue.

The Hengzhou floods caused massive losses to local scented tea processing factories, while also offering clear insights for future development and upgrading. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Current impact: Hengzhou is home to more than 170 scented tea processing enterprises. Many factories have seen their workshops flooded, crippling fresh flower drying and storage operations. Road closures have also sharply reduced the efficiency of flower picking and transportation. Already harvested and stored flowers are at high risk of damp and spoilage, and most factories have suffered substantial losses.

2. Inherent industrial characteristics: Jasmine must be picked and used on the same day; harvested flowers require same-day scenting and cannot be stored as fresh raw material for the long term. The supply chain has no inherent buffer, the industry is extremely geographically dependent on this core production region, and it is very difficult to shift production capacity in a short timeframe.

3. Insights for future development: Factories can explore setting up branch factories in other regions, while establishing standardized finished dried tea storage systems to reduce full dependence on immediate supply of local fresh jasmine. They can also advance digital production transformation and standardize scenting processes to reduce reliance on the experience of senior master technicians and improve production stability.

The Hengzhou floods have exposed multiple pain points in the jasmine tea beverage industrial chain, while creating new market opportunities for relevant service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core exposed pain points: The entire jasmine industry is overly dependent on the single core production region of Hengzhou, leaving it extremely vulnerable to extreme weather events. Processing has long relied on manual experience, resulting in low standardization. The strict timeliness of fresh flowers leaves the supply chain with no buffer, and most brands and factories lack comprehensive emergency reserve and multi-region sourcing contingency plans.

2. Industry development trends: After the floods, the entire industrial chain will increasingly prioritize supply chain resilience, leading to sharp growth in demand for services including supply chain risk management, multi-region resource integration, and emergency reserve system building.

3. Development directions for service providers: Providers can develop targeted supply chain risk assessment services, integrate resources from other regions suitable for growing high-quality jasmine sambac, and offer multi-region raw material matching services for brands and factories. They can also develop standardized scenting process technology services to help clients improve production stability, and build off-site emergency warehousing supporting solutions.

The Hengzhou floods have exposed flaws in the current jasmine supply chain system, while pointing to new development directions for relevant supply chain and tea beverage platforms. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core demands from the industrial chain: After the disaster, upstream and downstream brands and processing factories all have a clear demand to improve supply chain risk resilience, need access to diversified regional resources, and require supporting emergency supply chain services.

2. Platform operation optimization directions: Platforms can proactively develop resources from other regions suitable for growing high-quality jasmine sambac, onboarding diversified suppliers, and improve cross-regional raw material allocation and emergency reserve functions within the platform to help onboarded clients mitigate the risk of supply cuts from a single region.

3. Risk management and business development directions: Platforms should proactively warn onboarded merchants of the risks of over-reliance on a single production region, guide merchants to optimize their supply chain layout, and launch targeted support services for post-disaster reconstruction in Hengzhou. This not only helps the industry recover but also attracts more clients to onboard the platform. Platforms should also establish emergency response mechanisms for extreme weather events to improve the platform's own risk resilience.

Against the backdrop of rapid growth in new-style tea beverages, the Hengzhou jasmine floods serve as a rare upstream supply chain stress test, bringing many new research insights for the industry. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Newly identified industrial issues: Against a background of increasingly frequent extreme weather, the development model of concentrating in a single core production region that the new-style tea beverage upstream adopted to cut costs and control quality has exposed a structural flaw of extremely weak risk resilience. Combined with the inherent strict timeliness of fresh jasmine that leaves the supply chain with no buffer, most downstream brands lack comprehensive raw material contingency plans, leading to severely insufficient supply chain resilience.

2. New industrial trends: After this disaster, the jasmine supply chain will gradually shift from its historical focus on cost and quality prioritization to a new model that balances supply chain security. The entire industrial chain will begin to prioritize multi-region sourcing and emergency reserve system building, leading to a shift in the industry's development logic.

3. Research implications: Future research should focus on risk management models for agricultural industrial chains under the context of climate change, explore how to balance the cost and quality advantages brought by industrial agglomeration with supply chain resilience, and provide more references for China's agricultural industrialization and the development of agriculture-related industrial chains.