The rainy season in Menghai is always wrapped in sticky water vapor. When Yan Wen, the tea warehouse manager, opened the iron door, his fingertips touched the condensed water droplets on the door frame, and his heart sank suddenly. The Pu'er tea cakes piled in the corner of the warehouse were unnaturally dark-this was the 357g ripe Pu'er that was scrapped last year due to moisture, which directly caused the tea factory to lose 370,000 yuan. "When the rainy season comes, even the air can squeeze out water, and no matter how good the tea is, it can't stand it." He squatted down and pinched a piece of tea residue, and the broken pieces stuck to the palm of his hand into a wet ball.
This Pu'er tea factory, which has been passed down for three generations, once relied on the traditional charcoal dehumidification method. However, in the past two years, e-commerce customized orders have skyrocketed, requiring tea cakes to be individually packaged and the shelf life to be extended to 5 years. The old method has completely failed. Before the rainy season in 2023, Manager Dao, the head of the tea factory, gritted his teeth and introduced the ply-pack intelligent tea packaging machine. When the equipment entered the factory, the old masters shook their heads around the silver-gray "iron cabinet": "Can machines understand Pu'er tea better than people?"
The first task of the new equipment is to process 2,000 high-end customized tea gifts. The humidity sensor system of the intelligent tea packaging machine lights up a yellow light at the moment of startup-the humidity in the packaging workshop has reached 78%. The robotic arm did not move immediately, but first triggered the circular wind curtain to isolate the external moisture, and then released the nano-scale dry particle flow. When the display screen jumps to green, the packaging module slowly descends and sends the tea cake into the three-layer composite film packaging.
"The most amazing thing is this pressure balance valve." Manager Dao pointed to the micro device on the packaging film and explained, "The air pressure fluctuates greatly during the rainy season, and bulging and leaking often occurred in the past. Now it can automatically adjust the internal and external pressure difference." Data retrieved by the technical team showed that the moisture content of tea cakes packaged by the new equipment stabilized at 5.2%-5.5% after three months of storage, which is 76% smaller than the fluctuation range of traditional packaging.
What surprised the masters even more was the "learning ability" of the smart tea packaging machine. When processing Pu'er loose tea of different years, the equipment can automatically adjust the nitrogen filling amount through spectral analysis-3-year-old tea is injected with 85% nitrogen, and 10-year-old tea is increased to 92%. The weighing, bagging, and sealing process that originally required three skilled workers to operate now only requires one operator to monitor the screen.
"In the past, the packaging workshop was most afraid of receiving urgent orders." Packaging team leader Yu Han recalled, "Now the equipment can handle small e-commerce orders and large wholesale orders at the same time. Last week, 3,000 mixed orders were completed 8 hours ahead of schedule." The loss rate of the tea factory this year has dropped from 8.7% to 1.3%, and the upgrade of moisture-proof technology alone has saved more than 500,000 yuan in costs.
When the autumn rain covered Menghai again, Yan Wen stood in the renovated smart storage area and scanned the neatly stacked tea cakes with a flashlight. The packaging film exuded a fine metallic luster under the beam of light, like armor for each tea cake. He suddenly remembered that humid morning three years ago, the tea dust that melted in his palm has now been locked behind the barrier built by technology.
