BRITAIN traditionally may be a nation of tea drinkers, it may long have followed America and developed a hankering for coffee, but if Hachiro Honjo has his way, Earl Grey and Starbucks will be things of the past.

The hot cup of Typhoo and the steaming mocha latte will soon be out and our favourite tipple will be cold, green, slightly bitter — and bottled.

If his strategy is right, mineral water, fizzy drinks and fruit juice may also soon give way to the relentless advance of green tea. Farmland in Australia and America will become sprawling Japanese plantations, churning out ever greater quantities of leaves to feed the world’s rising green tea habit.

Honjo is president of the world’s largest green tea maker and his vision of a global soft drinks market dominated by Japanese green tea is less fantastic than many might suppose. Since the mid-1980s his company, Ito-en, has waged a relentless campaign in Japan against Coca-Cola. The campaign finally has paid off, and Oi-ocha, Ito-en’s bottled tea, has emerged triumphant as Japan’s biggest single soft-drink product. The company recently reported record profits of 21 billion yen (£102 million).

Led by Ito-en, green tea is fast becoming the overall soft drink of choice in Japan, where canned coffee is still dominant. By the company’s forecasts, green tea sales will overtake coffee consumption in about seven years, hitting more than £5 billion annually.

Amid rising health concerns over highly sweetened drinks and high rates of obesity in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, Honjo is determined to repeat the victory over Coke elsewhere. Initially, he says, it may be easiest to achieve first in countries such as Britain, India and China because they have an historic tea culture.

Yet Ito-en is engaged in an even bigger push in Coke’s home territory. It has prised ready-to-drink bottled green tea out of the health food shops and opened Ito-en flagship stores in central New York. US profits doubled last year to 1.4 billion yen and Ito-en is in the final stages of negotiations to stock bottled and leaf green tea in American supermarkets. Ito-en soon will open stores in London and Paris and is talking to British supermarkets.

“I want Oi-ocha to become the world’s biggest soft drink brand and I want it to be bigger than Coke,” Honjo told The Times. “You may think that it is difficult to unseat a brand that has been around for over 100 years, but remember that green tea has been around for more than 1,000.”

Ito-en’s optimism is based on three main factors, the first being growing evidence of the health benefits of green tea.

“There is a vague impression that coffee is not healthy, and consumers have come to understand the benefits of green tea,” Honjo says. He produces a document suggesting that green tea prevents hypertension, improves brain function, eliminates bad breath, prevents cancer, flu and allergies and has an anti-obesity effect.

Ito-en is also bullish because, unlike all its rivals, it is a farmer of green tea: “We have complete control over the flavour of our tea because we grow it.”

Honjo adds that Japan now consumes 20 per cent more tea than it produces itself. Ito-en has taught Australian farmers to grow green tea, so that there are now crops being harvested during the Japanese winter.

Honjo’s third reason for confidence is last year’s victory in Japan’s regular “tea wars”, in which soft drinks giants — Asahi, Suntory, Coca-Cola, Dydo and Ito-en — advertise to woo summer drinkers. “It was good for green tea this year,” says Honjo. “It increased overall sales and raised the profile. You know, we have a saying in Japan. Drink tea wherever you go. Even with your enemies.”

REFINED TASTE

2005 sales of all types of tea in the UK, with % change against 2000

Total £802.8m(+0.26%)

Black standard: £651.2m (–5.22%)

Green: £12.5m (+316.6%)

Fruit/herbal: £64m (+73.4%)

Instant tea: £10.3m (–54.42%)

Ready-to-drink: £19.9m (+1226%)

Other: £3.2m (+700%)

Source: Euromonitor

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