German importers are of central importance for tea producers in Darjeeling in the state of West Bengal, northern India. Companies such as the Ostfriesische Tee Gesellschaft (OTG), Teekampagne, TeeGschwendner, and others purchase roughly a quarter of the region’s yearly tea output. In addition, they are the most important buyers of the early tea harvests (first flush and second flush), which command the highest prices. Hamburg is Europe’s central shipping terminal for tea, with almost half of all tea imports into Germany re-exported out of Germany at a high price. The price margins along the tea supply chain from Darjeeling to Germany are extremely disparate. A calculation by a German tea importer in the top price bracket (market segment A) for loose-leaf tea shows that only around 30 percent of the shelf price remains in India, with a maximum of 22 percent making it to the company that operates the plantation. The tea pluckers receive the equivalent of between 1.4 percent and 2.8 percent of the tea’s retail price in Germany.