The most important phases of the treatment with respect to orthodox tea production (WK1 used method) are: withering, rolling, fermenting, drying and sorting into leaf and broken grades.

• 1. WitheringWhen the fresh leaves reach the factory, they are weighed and the amount is registered. Next, the withering process is commenced where the humidy content of the leaves is reduced by about 30 % in order to make them soft and flexible for the subsequent rolling. The withering takes place in special withering through of a length of 25 - 30 m, which are stringed with a wire grid and ventilated with large fans. The leaves are spread out on the grid. The air, which moves through the ventilators, can also be heated if required due to higher humidity content of the leaves. The withering process takes 1 hour and 40 minutes.
• 2. RollingSubsequently, the withering green leaves are rolled in large rolling machines. This introduces the fermentation as well as the development of the essential oils, which then determine the scent and the flavor of the teas. The rolled tea, which now already starts to ferment, is brought into the fermentation room. Our factory uses "rotorvane" machine, a type of shredder, which further processes the leaves. Here, the leaves are moved across a slowly rotating screw conveyor through a cylinder into which oxygen is introduced in order to accelerate the fermentation. The rolling process takes 5 minutes.
• 3. FermentationThe fermentation is an oxidation and tanning process of the cell fluids, which have been released during the rolling. For the fermentation, the leaves are spread out on tables in layers of 10 cm. During the fermentation - which takes 1 hour - the leaves change their colour, which gradually becomes a copper-red. This colour is found again in wet tealeaves of the infusion. The "tea maker" needs to constantly monitor the degree of oxidation, particularly with respect to the scent of the wet leaves. The quality of the finished tea is very much dependent on the correct fermentation.
• 4. DryingThe fermentation is finished when the desired grade of fermentation is reached. As soon as the tea has developed its typical smell and the copper-red colour is dried. For this, so-called tiered dryers are used which are fuelled with the boilers which are feed with wood chips. The tea is moved through the dryer on a conveyor belt. The starting temperature amounts to 105°C and binds the cell fluid firmly to the leaves. Towards the end of the 25-minute long drying process, the temperature decreases to 40°C and the humidity content to approximately 6%. Later, when the tea is infused, the cell fluid, which stuck to the dried leaves, is solved in the hot water and produces the aromatic and invigorating drink.
• 5. Sorting and GradingThe black tea, which is released by the dryer, is the so-called raw tea, which is now sieved via a number of shaking, mechanical sieves with varying sieve sizes with which the common leaf grades are separated from each other. Depending on the sieve sizes, sorting generally yields the following grades: Leaf Tea - Broken Tea - Fannings - Dust
• 6. BlendingOnce the sorting is finished, WK1 allocates the different tea grades into silos bags for the blending process. Before the blend process starts, the chief of production takes samples from the silo bags to do the testing of the tea grades at the laboratory.

The testing consist on several steps:
• Bring the tea to an external laboratory to perform microbiological and bacteria analyses
• Measure the humidity percentage and dust content at the WK1 Lab.
• Measure the tea density
• Cup the tea for quality purpose

Once all the results of the testing are satisfactory, the chief of production gives the order to start the blending and packing.

“Every blend has its own formula as a result of combining different tea grades (Leaf Tea - Broken Tea - Fannings - Dust)”

The tea silos bags are dropping into a big silo applying the ratios and percentages every blend has with the different tea grades. For example one blend can be 66% of Fanning and 34% of broken tea. Therefore for this specific blend, the packing team drops 2 silos bags of fanning per 1 silo bag of broken tea at the same time to have a uniform product that goes into the big silo from where the tea is aspirated to the tea bags in the packing area.