Matcha Powder

Industry-typical MOQ for stone-ground matcha runs 10–50 kg per SKU for standard culinary or mid-grade material, with higher minimums for custom blends and lower minimums for premium/ceremonial-tier lots. Lead times generally fall in the 4–8 week range from PO confirmation, depending on (a) whether the lot is from existing stock or a fresh harvest blend, (b) packaging complexity (bulk foil vs retail-ready cans), and (c) export documentation requirements for the destination market. The first-flush (shincha) harvest in late April–May is a hard constraint on availability for vintage-dated single-harvest lots.

For tea products bound for EU or US markets, suppliers typically issue a per-lot Certificate of Analysis (CoA) covering pesticide residues (against destination-market MRLs), heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury), microbiological counts (total plate, yeast/mould, coliform, E. coli, Salmonella), and moisture/ash where applicable. For EU shipments, a TRACES e-CoI is required for organic-claimed product, and post-Fukushima radioactivity testing certificates are still requested by some buyers even though the EU lifted its blanket import-control regulation on Japanese food (Regulation 2021/1533 was repealed effective 3 August 2023). Always specify the test methods (e.g., GC-MS/MS for pesticides) in the supply contract.

Larger tea OEM operators with established export channels (typical of Uji, Nishio, Shizuoka and Kagoshima exporters) routinely supply English-language CoAs, allergen statements, kosher/halal/organic certificates, and product specifications. Smaller-scale producers may issue Japanese-only documentation and rely on a trading-house intermediary for translation. As a buyer, request a sample CoA in English up front — this is a fast proxy for whether the supplier is set up for international B2B work. Specifications are best fixed in a bilingual (EN/JP) data sheet to avoid downstream disputes on parameters such as particle size or colour values.

Organic JAS is the most widely held certification among export-oriented matcha producers, and (per the EU–Japan equivalence agreement) is accepted as organic in the EU; many producers also carry USDA NOP equivalence for the US market. Kosher (typically OU or Star-K) and halal (JAKIM-recognised certifiers in Japan such as JMA, NAHA, or MPJA) certifications are increasingly common at mid-to-large producers but should not be assumed — confirm in the RFQ. Tea is naturally pareve and contains no animal-derived ingredients, but processing-line cross-contact and any flavoured-blend SKUs need to be verified.

Three drivers dominate: (1) the size and quality of the spring tencha harvest in major producing regions (weather, frost damage, shading-cloth availability), (2) overall global demand — the export channel for powdered Japanese tea has grown sharply in recent years, with MAFF/JETRO export statistics showing year-on-year double-digit growth and periodic supply tightness, and (3) the grade tier requested, since first-flush, single-origin, koicha-grade material can trade at a 5–10x premium over culinary blends. For long-horizon contracts, consider an indexation clause referencing prefectural auction prices rather than fixing a flat per-kilo rate.