Black Tea (CTC & Orthodox) Drying 

Black tea, whether produced through the high-throughput Cut-Tear-Curl (CTC) process or the traditional orthodox rolling method requires a drying process that is precisely calibrated to preserve the distinctive copper-coloured liquor, brisk astringency, and rich aroma that define quality black tea. The two production methods create fundamentally different physical tea structures that demand distinctly engineered drying approaches. CTC tea comprises uniform, small, tightly wound pellets of 1–3mm diameter with high surface-area-to-volume ratio, enabling rapid heat and mass transfer in fluid bed or vibrating conveyor dryers. Orthodox tea, by contrast, consists of whole or broken twisted leaf with a heterogeneous particle structure and variable bulk density that requires gentler, longer-residence-time drying on multi-pass conveyor systems to achieve uniform moisture reduction without physically disrupting the leaf structure. Kerone Engineering Solutions designs separate, optimised industrial drying systems for CTC and orthodox black tea, each engineered around the specific physical structure, fermentation chemistry, and quality target of the respective tea type.