What is the name of the oldest tea company in the world?

Twinings is the tea company most commonly identified as the world’s oldest.

Its history begins in London in 1706, when Thomas Twining established a tea business at 216 Strand. The site remains a Twinings shop, making the company unusually easy to connect with its original location. Twinings grew during the period when tea was becoming fashionable in Britain, despite high prices and heavy taxation that also encouraged smuggling.

The company’s famous logo dates to 1787 and is recognized as the world’s oldest continually used company logo. Twinings is also associated with Earl Grey, although the precise history of that blend’s creation and the company’s role in it is less certain than popular marketing often suggests.

A useful distinction is that “oldest tea company” generally means the oldest continuously operating tea brand or tea merchant, not the oldest business of any kind. Twinings became part of Associated British Foods in 1964, but its tea business traces its origins to the 1706 London shop.