Orimi Group of Companies: what is known about the tea manufacturer that was banned in Belarus

April 9 in Belarus banned sale of Russian tea “Gita” and “Princess of Kandy” from the company “Orimi”. The history of the largest tea and coffee producer in Russia is in the Kommersant reference.

The Orimi group of companies was founded in 1994 in St. Petersburg. It produces tea and coffee under the brands Greenfield, Tess, Princess Noori, Princess Java, Gita, Princess Kandy, Jardin and Jockey.

After its founding, Orimi relied on the regions and began to pursue an aggressive advertising policy, managing to quickly gain a significant market share. Subsequently, Orimi itself began to shape market trends – for example, the launch of the fruit line of the premium Greenfield brand contributed to a significant increase in the popularity of the fruit tea segment. The company was also one of the first to catch the trend towards switching from loose leaf to bagged tea.

In 2000, Orimi opened the Nevskie Porogi factory with a capacity of 30 thousand tons of tea products per year. The total investment in the factory’s technology and equipment exceeded $65 million. In 2004, it participated in a legal battle with the Mai tea company over ownership of the Gita brand, but the dispute was settled out of court. In the spring of 2007, the company’s employees, dissatisfied with working conditions, created a trade union and complained to the labor inspectorate: Orimi was fined, and the trade union leaders were fired. In November 2011, Orimi acquired the investment bank United Capital for 142.5 million rubles.

In February 2018, the company invested 100 million rubles. into the production of capsule coffee and tea at a factory in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region, the capacity of the lines was 300 thousand capsules per day. In December 2019, it launched a plant for the production of instant coffee in the Utkina Zavod technology park in the Leningrad region. The total investment in the project amounted to 6.4 billion rubles. The capacity of the new production is 4.5 thousand tons of coffee per year.

In 2020, according to an Orimi representative, the company increased export shipments of tea and coffee by 3%, resulting in the share of exports in the structure of total sales amounting to about 17%. Coffee exports to post-Soviet countries increased by 9%.

At the beginning of 2022, Jacobs negotiated the purchase of Orimi, but the deal fell through. At the end of 2023, Orimi increased production volume at the plant in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region by 5–7% compared to 2022.

Orimi ranks first in the Russian tea market with a share of more than 30% in volume terms and third place in the coffee market, controlling 13% (data from the Roschaykofe association). The company is a leader in the national tea markets of Belarus and Moldova, and occupies leading positions in the markets of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The company’s structure includes 75 regional representative offices in Russia, representative offices in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, as well as subsidiaries in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Products are presented in 35 countries.

The main buyer in the fast food industry is the Vkusno-i Tochka chain, whose production volume in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region is 200–250 tons per year. In total, the company produces more than 95 thousand tons of products per year. The main owners of the company are Alexander Evnevich (46%), Sergei Kasyanenko (45.3%) and Ivan Tyushkevich (7.2%). Revenue in 2023 amounted to 50.6 billion rubles, net profit – 19 billion rubles. The number of personnel is over 4 thousand people.