The diagram illustrates how black tea is produced in two different ways.
Overall, there are five main stages for manufacturing black tea, starting from picking tea leaves, divided into traditional methods and modern methods before reaching the final stage.
In the first process, the gardener will select fresh tea leaves with good quality containing only buds and two top leaves, then picked tea leaves will be left on the rack to take 60% of moisture out by air from the fan. After the withering process, withered tea leaves will be in the next stages of using either traditional or modern methods. The conventional method is about rolling tea leaves and making them break to let enzymes release from the leaves. In the new modern method involves in cutting tea leaves, torn and curled them which this way will more quicker and make tea leaves smaller like pieces of granular.
In the fourth stage, oxidation or fermentation starts with spreading on the rolled leaves on tiles or cement surfaces to let enzymes react with the air to change tea leaves to copper color. In the final stage called firing or drying which flavour and aroma will be released by placing copper shade tea leaves in the oven or hot air dryers and 97% of moisture in total will be gone out.