Jiufeng Ecological Tea Garden has been using newly-developed lift-type tea-picking machines to increase efficiency in recent days.
With two workers standing on both sides of the 1.5-meter-wide tea field in the tea garden, fresh tea leaves precisely cut by the reciprocating cutter are continuously blown into the large white pocket on the back side by the fan. A 50-meter-long tea field can be entirely picked in a single minute.
Xu Yonghui, director of Jiufeng Ecological Tea Garden, said that the machine is able to pick 450 kilograms of tea leaves per hour, which can help save on both time and money.
The machine was developed by Jinhua Jiuqi Machinery Co and the tea garden machinery team of Jinhua Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The products have been used at seven main tea production areas in China, and have been exported to countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
The tea industry is a leading industry in Jinhua, East China's Zhejiang province. The city is currently home to 350,000 mu (23,333.33 hectares) of tea trees producing 32,000 metric tons of tea annually, with an annual output value of 2.15 billion yuan ($321.07 million). About 250,000 people are working in the tea industry.
