PG Tips may be sold after good old British tea goes off the boil

BRITAIN is known as a nation of tea lovers – gulping down nearly 60billion cuppas a year.

But now sales of traditional black tea are slipping as we turn to herbal varieties and coffee instead.

The slide means famous brand PG Tips could be sold for up to £5billion.

Britain drinks the most tea in the world apart from Turkey and Ireland, using more than 4lb of leaves each annually, according to a global study.

Even though black tea remains the UK’s favourite hot drink, the number of cups brewed fell by 630million in the year to February 2019.

PG Tips owner Unilever, whose tea brands also include Lipton and Lyons, said it was reviewing its businesses – and one option is getting rid of black teas.

The Anglo-Dutch giant said it was focusing on expanding herbal brands such as Pukka instead.

The Chinese have been drinking tea for 5,000 years but it was not until the 17th century that the drink arrived in Britain.

PG Tips traces its roots back to 1869 and is famed for its comical television adverts featuring chimpanzees in human clothing apparently sipping tea which ran for decades until 2002.

Unilever boss Alan Jope yesterday said that fans of builder’s tea are ‘getting older and will start to fall over’.

The tea business currently brings Unilever annual sales of £ 2.4billion globally. But it said the decline in traditional teas had been ‘dragging’ on the company for a decade.

PG Tips lost its top spot in the UK last year, with Twinings outselling it. Even chief executive Mr Jope was sipping herbal tea yesterday as he spoke to the media – but he insisted: ‘I started the day with a cup of PG.’