Industrial sourcing · China to Europe

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Buyer guide · Coffee & tea

Tea sorting machine from China

A tea sorter is judged by two numbers that pull against each other, how many stalks and off-colour pieces it takes out and how much good leaf it throws away with them, and a demo that reports only the first hides the cost in the second.

Ask about this machine ↗Where the numbers come from

Written and listings checked 1 October 2026. Every figure on this page names its source.

What you are actually comparing.

Two quotes, one machine name

What hides inside the price

Camera type

Standard colour cameras see colour differences; near-infrared or shape recognition helps with green stalks in green tea, where colour alone barely differs. Ask which camera and on which tea it was tuned.

Chute or belt

Chute sorters let product slide past the cameras and suit free-flowing, rolled teas. Belt sorters carry light, flat or broken leaf steadily. Ask which your leaf style needs.

Channels and passes

More channels mean more output. Many lines sort twice, re-sorting the reject to recover good leaf. Ask whether that second pass is a separate machine.

Ejectors and air

Fast air valves blow rejects out. Ask the valve count, spare valves supplied and the compressed air the sorter uses, since a large compressor may be an unquoted cost.

Dust and cleaning

Tea dust clouds the camera windows and the sort drifts. Ask how windows are kept clean during a shift and how long cleaning takes.

Before you ask for a price.

Send these with the enquiry. Without them, any number a factory gives you is a guess dressed as a quotation.

A sample of your unsorted tea and a sample of the sorted result you want.
Tea style: rolled, twisted, flat, broken or dust.
Kilos per hour and whether a second pass on rejects is wanted.
The defects to remove, in order: stalks, off-colour leaf, stones, foreign matter.
Compressed air capacity on site, power supply and dust extraction.

Turn the claim into a demonstration.

Require this	A pass looks like
Sort a weighed batch of your unsorted tea at target rate, keeping accept and reject separate.	Accept and reject both weighed, with the good leaf in the reject counted from a sample and inside the limit you set.
Hand count stalks in samples of feed and accept.	Stalks in the accept reduced to the level agreed before the test, from counted samples.
Run for a full shift length without cleaning.	Accept quality at the end matches the start, with any drift recorded.

The documents that must arrive with it.

EU Declaration of Conformity with model and serial number.
Food contact evidence under Regulation (EC) 1935/2004 for hopper, chutes or belt and accept outlet.
Settings file for each tea programme, exportable, so a new operator can restore it.

The one people forget. The saved sorting programmes. The factory tunes the sorter on your tea during the demo, and without the exported settings the tuning stays in their office.

When this is the wrong machine.

Buy something else if

Named, not hedged

Your main problem is size grading, not colour or stalks.

A vibrating screen or grading sieve. A colour sorter does not size the leaf.

You sort a few hundred kilos a season.

Hand picking or a sorting service. A sorter needs steady volume and compressed air to pay back.

Where the numbers come from.

We name the kind of source, how many and when, and never the factory. Listed prices are asking prices, not landed cost. Where we do not hold a fact we say so: that is a GAP, not an estimate.

Listings · 11Eleven tea colour sorter listings with a price on one marketplace, checked October 2026. Nine asked US$4,800 to US$50,000; two asked US$380, too low to be a real machine price. Asking prices, not landed cost.
Listings · 2Of those, checked October 2026, one green tea sorter named a near-infrared sensor at US$6,300 to US$6,400 and one black tea sorter named a CCD camera at US$9,500 to US$10,000.
GAPGAP - no supplier quotations logged for this machine yet. Three to five quotations for one configuration would give a real price spread.
GAPGAP - no listing stated good leaf lost to reject. A sort report on a weighed batch would close it.

Related machines.

Tea bag packing machine. Choose it if your tea is already clean and the next step is bagging.
Coffee roasting machine. Read it if your raw material is green coffee, sorted and then roasted.

Every machine we source in this area is on the Coffee & tea page. How a project runs, stage by stage, is on how it works, and what it costs is on pricing.

Straight answers

Questions buyers ask about this machine.

Chinese vs European tea sorting machine: how should I compare?+

Compare camera type, reject counts on your tea and how fast air valves are replaced, not the headline tonnage.

What goes on a tea sorter inspection checklist?+

Weighed accept and reject, stalk counts, good leaf in reject, a full shift run, valve count, spares and the serial number.

What EU compliance applies to a tea sorting machine?+

A Declaration of Conformity under 2006/42/EC until 19 January 2027 or Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 after, with 2014/35/EU and 2014/30/EU, plus Regulation (EC) 1935/2004 for contact parts.

Who acts as the importer?+

The business placing the sorter on the EU market. It checks the conformity papers and adds its name and address.

Contact

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