The South African Tea That Almost Lost Its Own Name

Imagine growing a crop for generations, finding overseas customers willing to pay for it, and then receiving a letter telling you that you may no longer use its name. Not because somebody invented a better product. Because somebody else registered the word.

It sounds like the kind of legal oddity that would be resolved in an afternoon. Instead, it happened to rooibos, the caffeine-free red infusion made from Aspalathus linearis, a shrub native to the Cape. The name travelled from South African farms to an American trademark register, was assigned for a reported $10, and became the centre of a dispute that consumed close to $1 million in legal fees.¹

That is the entertaining version. The economic version is considerably more revealing. The dispute exposed a weakness in how South Africa commercialised a geographically distinctive product. The country could grow the plant. Its farmers knew how to cultivate it. Its processors could turn it into something millions of people would drink. But the right to market the product abroad under its familiar name was being contested.

The question was never only whether South Africa could keep the word rooibos. It was who would control access to the markets that word unlocked.

How a plant name became somebody's property

Rooibos does not grow naturally just anywhere. Its home is the winter-rainfall landscape around the Cederberg and surrounding rooibos-growing areas of the Western and Northern Cape. The shrubs cope with dry summers, coarse soils and conditions that would make life difficult for many conventional crops. Their needle-like leaves turn their characteristic reddish colour through oxidation after harvest.^{1, 6}

The Khoi and San held traditional knowledge of the plant long before there was an export market, a modern packaging line or a trademark attorney involved. Commercialisation came later. In the early twentieth century, tea trader Benjamin Ginsberg helped develop a wider market, while Dr Lafras Nortier's work on propagation supported cultivation at scale. By the middle of the century, the industry had formal processing and marketing institutions.¹

Then came a particularly improbable twist.

South African entrepreneur Annique Theron built a business around rooibos-infused health and beauty products. Her company applied in the United States to register the word ROOIBOS on 3 February 1993; US registration No. 1,864,122 followed on 22 November 1994. Whatever the commercial logic behind a product brand, this was also the common name of a plant already known and traded by other people.²

The problem became acute in 2001. WIPO reports that, on retirement, Theron transferred the mark to her US agent Virginia Burke-Watkins for $10. Through Burke International, cease-and-desist letters were then sent to tea cafés and online retailers. Some businesses were asked for $5,000 in compensation. Others chose the awkward alternatives “red tea” or “red bush” rather than fight.¹

Consider the position of a small retailer. Even where a trademark claim may ultimately fail, responding to legal threats costs money and attention. The cheaper immediate choice may be to change the label. At scale, that becomes an economic barrier: the right to call a product by its ordinary name is effectively rationed by the cost of defending it.

Rooibos Limited challenged the registration and sought to register “Rooibos the Red Tea” in 2002. Producers linked to the Wupperthal co-operative encountered the same market-access obstacle. American importers and other tea businesses joined the legal contest. In February 2005, contemporaneous reporting recorded a Missouri district court decision finding the term generic in a case involving The Republic of Tea. A settlement followed; the US registration was formally cancelled in September.^{1, 3, 4}

The industry was free of that particular exclusive US trademark claim. But the settlement was not a global property deed. It established something narrower and more important: in that dispute, a common botanical name could not be converted into one company's exclusive commercial label.

The global product that only one region can grow

The word tea is useful for explaining rooibos to consumers, but technically misleading for market analysis. Ordinary black and green tea come from Camellia sinensis. Rooibos is a herbal infusion, or tisane. Putting the entire global tea industry in the denominator and presenting rooibos as a precise percentage would say very little about this niche market's true economics.

What we can measure more reliably is the export trade from its source. The South African Rooibos Council puts 2025 exports at around 10,930 tonnes, versus approximately 5,900 tonnes in 2015. That is about 85% growth over the decade. The industry now sends product to more than 50 markets.⁵

Japan is the striking part of that expansion. In 2025, it imported roughly 3,606 tonnes, or 33% of South Africa's recorded rooibos exports. This is hardly an obvious market for a shrub from the Cederberg. Yet it is evidence that the product has travelled beyond the group of European countries one might initially expect to dominate its customer base.⁵

And in export data, “where it goes” is not always the same as “where it is drunk”. An international trading or blending hub can import bulk product and then distribute it to other markets. The Netherlands and Germany are significant trading destinations, but these figures should not be read as direct measurements of final household consumption.

To see the business opportunity, follow a crop beyond the farm gate. Growers sell leaves and stems. Processors clean, grade, oxidise or dry them, then blend and pack them. Traders move bulk product across borders. Consumer brands may put it into bags, concentrates, bottled drinks or skincare. Restaurants find their own applications. The final shelf price includes services and margins that are not captured by the farm-gate price.

South African firms participate beyond cultivation: processors and brands such as Rooibos Limited and Carmién Tea demonstrate that the domestic opportunity is not restricted to selling unprocessed material. At the same time, research on the value chain describes the importance of bulk exporting, a channel that can shift consumer-facing packaging and branding activity offshore.¹¹

The strategic question is therefore not whether bulk exports are bad. For some producers they offer scale, dependable customers and lower commercial risk. It is whether South African suppliers can choose to capture more of the formulation, design, certification, product development and consumer relationship where that is commercially worthwhile.

Behind the export figures, a very small growing region

Rooibos is simultaneously an advantage and a constraint for South Africa. Its geographical distinctiveness makes imitation difficult and creates an authentic origin story. It also concentrates production risk. You cannot simply respond to a global demand surge by planting commercial rooibos across every province, as one might expand maize or sunflower area.

The productive landscape includes Clanwilliam, the Cederberg and Wupperthal, as well as areas around the Suid Bokkeveld and Nieuwoudtville, the Sandveld and other designated rooibos-growing districts. Farmers do not operate identical businesses. Commercial estates, smaller growers and co-operatives differ in land access, scale, processing arrangements and direct exposure to export buyers.^{6, 11}

Heiveld and Wupperthal matter to this story because they turn an apparently abstract trademark conflict into something concrete. A small producer with a few hectares cannot afford a prolonged foreign legal dispute. If the export route becomes contingent on accepting another party's naming rights, bargaining power can disappear long before a judge rules.

The Rooibos Council estimates income and employment for approximately 8,000 people across farming and related activities. That is a meaningful rural employment footprint, but not a count of 8,000 full-time farm jobs: it covers a wider set of roles, including processing and other value-chain activities.⁶

Climate is the other part of the equation. The Council estimated production at about 17,000 tonnes in 2023, 14,000 in 2024 and 15,000 in 2025. These are harvest estimates, not sales. Product held in inventory and differences in reporting periods mean that production and exports should not be mechanically added or compared as if they were identical accounting lines.^{5, 6}

This is why rooibos economics look different through the eyes of a lender. A stronger global brand may lift demand, but it does not increase rainfall or eliminate the need to replant, pay workers and bridge a season of poor yields. The business case for financing expansion depends not only on export orders, but also on production resilience and the farmer's share of the resulting value.

Winning the name was not the end of the ownership question

There are really three distinct rights at issue here, and mixing them up makes for bad economics. A private trademark identifies goods or services in commerce. A geographical indication identifies a product whose qualities or reputation depend on where it comes from. Traditional knowledge rights and benefit sharing concern the contribution of communities whose knowledge helped make commercial use possible.

In the American dispute, the industry resisted an exclusive trademark over a common name. At home, protections tied the word to its recognised South African origin. Then in 2021, the European Union formally registered “Rooibos” / “Red Bush” as a Protected Designation of Origin. That is a different proposition: qualifying producers in the designated area can use the protected name, while products failing the origin rules cannot present themselves as the same protected product.^{1, 7}

Protection is not the same as ownership by a single farmer or processor. That distinction matters. A genuinely collective origin right can defend a region's reputation while allowing different producers to compete within it. The challenge becomes governance: who sets standards, how compliance is financed, and whether small growers can afford certification and market access.

There is a further chapter that is too important to treat as a footnote. After years of negotiations, the industry and representatives of the Khoi and San concluded an industry-wide benefit-sharing agreement in 2019, recognising traditional knowledge associated with rooibos. Its financial mechanism is a levy equal to 1.5% of the farm-gate purchase price, paid by processors under the agreement.^{8, 9}

In February 2026, the Rooibos Council reported that R42.7 million had been shared with traditional-knowledge holders over 2019–2024. That represents a material step toward recognising value created outside the conventional corporate balance sheet, although it does not by itself prove that every member of every affected community receives an equal benefit.⁵

There are legitimate unresolved questions. How broadly do the benefits reach rural knowledge-holding communities? What portion supports long-term opportunity rather than one-off distribution? Do small producers gain bargaining power through the origin designation, or face new compliance costs? Scholarly analysis has argued that benefit-sharing arrangements can reproduce inequalities even while formally recognising traditional knowledge.¹⁰

Those questions do not undo the agreement. They are the next stage of assessing whether it works.

The next billion cups will not be won in a courtroom

Rooibos has something most agricultural products spend fortunes trying to manufacture: an origin story that is authentic, impossible to relocate and recognised in law. The plant's natural geography gives it scarcity. A global customer base gives it demand. Decades of cultivation and processing know-how give it commercial credibility.

But neither rarity nor recognition automatically guarantees good returns to the people closest to production. A premium-priced rooibos latte sold abroad can be an excellent business for the retailer while leaving the original grower exposed to drought, currency movements and a buyer with more negotiating leverage. A registered origin name can support differentiation, but the industry's pricing, contracts and market structure still determine who receives the benefit.

It may also be unwise to pursue volume alone. The Rooibos Council has explicitly emphasised quality, traceability and responsible stewardship amid climatic uncertainty. Expansion that damages the ecological basis of the crop would erode the very characteristic that sets it apart.⁵

The useful comparison is with products such as Champagne, Darjeeling tea or other foods whose reputations depend on location. The lesson is not that a protected name automatically creates wealth. It is that collective rules around origin can become an economic asset when paired with quality, credible enforcement, market access and enough competition to reward innovation.

For South Africa, that raises a larger question about honeybush, buchu, indigenous foods and other region-specific resources. Which products have both a defensible place-of-origin story and enough commercial organisation to turn it into better prices, durable livelihoods and businesses beyond the farm?

In 2001, a trademark allegedly worth ten dollars put the rooibos industry in an expensive position. Twenty-five years later, the industry has built exports, formal origin protection and a benefit-sharing framework. The extraordinary part is no longer that someone tried to claim the name.

It is that defending a single word exposed almost every economic question that still matters: who grows the product, who controls the market, who carries the risk, and who gets paid.

❖