Yichang Tea Group Co., Ltd.

Yichang Tea Group Co., Ltd., known as Yicha Group, was set up in 2022 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Angel Group, the parent of Angel Yeast, with registered capital of RMB 300 million. It was formed to consolidate the tea industry around Yichang, Hubei province, on a commercial basis. Its head office is at 168 Chengdong Avenue, Yichang.

The business is organised in four segments: premium named teas, bulk tea, deep-processed tea and tea supply chain. Deep processing is the part that supplies food and beverage manufacturers, and covers instant tea, tea concentrate and high-theaflavin instant black tea. The group manages the Yichang Yihong and Yichang Maojian regional public brands and applies a single quality standard system across its members.

Five member companies sit in Yichang's main tea districts, including Yiling, Wufeng, Yidu and Xingshan, drawing on close to 400,000 mu of tea gardens, which the group states is more than a third of the city's planted area. Among them are Hubei Xiaoshi Tea, founded in 1999, which runs six processing bases and an unmanned clean processing plant, and Hubei Caihua Tea, founded in 2005 on the site of a tea station dating from 1951. The group runs its own tea technology centre alongside the eight technical centres of Angel Group, and has recruited more than 30 technical and applied research staff, including one doctorate holder and nineteen with master's degrees.