About us
Our Tamnan Tea story
Tamnan Tea was founded by Penpak & Stephan. Our tea journey started 2 years ago. On one of our many trips to Thailand we met great and good-hearted people. Among them farmers who just want to have a normal, happy, simple life, but cannot market their beautiful and healthy products, because of a gap in knowledge, network, support and market access. Besides their regular small family owned businesses, mainly in rice, cassava or corn, many of them seek to add a bit to their yearly income to make a better living.
Penpak grew up among farmers and helped her father in his trading business (mainly agricultural products) from a young age. So Pen knows the culture, knows her herbs, knows the needs of Thai farmers and the hidden potential that many of them have, but simply are unaware of; growing healthy herbs.
Connecting the dots we developed the idea and the concept of building an authentic Thai herbal tea brand; Tamnan Thai Herbs & Tea was born. Tamnan means ‘ legend’ in Thai language and is purely and 100% based on herbs planted, nutured, grown and harvested by small scale Thai farmers, to help them earn an extra living by getting access to different markets.
Thank you for drinking this loose herbal tea. To support local Thai communities we source all the ingredients in this tea directly from, mostly family owned, Thai farms. This way we support them with a more stable income. We are proud to serve you this taste of Thailand.
Quality
Visiting farms and quality testing. Because we want your tea to be healthy and safe. That is pretty much the summary of how we guarantee the quality of our herbs and how we know that ‘our’ farmers take good care of their land, give their herbs the proper nutrition and protection. After the usual visual inspections, extensive laboratory tests follow upon arrival at the factory to ensure a clean and safe consumable product.
Our tea has hardly had any processing, which means that the original product, with all its beautiful natural oil, taste and nutrients, remains intact as much as possible. And that is exactly what you taste! The drying process is as sustainable as can be; that is where the sun does her magic (albeit under controlled conditions).
To ‘organic’ or to ‘not-organic’
During our travels through Thailand we noticed that it is precisely the smallest and often poorest farmers who find it difficult to join a Fair Trade or organic organization in order to have a certificate. For them this often simply costs too much money. Especially when it comes to ‘European organic’ (because there is also ‘Thai organic’ , which is not valid here, and for example American organic). And often we see that they no longer have the certificate, because they cannot sell enough to pay for the certificate.
And that is pretty sad in our opinion. As Tamnan Thai Herbs & Tea, we do not want to avoid these small farmers by setting “organic” as a goal in itself. So to answer the question of whether we are a 100% organic; No, we are not! We help small farmers with a better life by taking away from them and paying them a good price; Yes! We hope for your support during our trip to assist our farmers. Thank you so much!
Our team
Penpak Boonla
Born and raised in Thailand, got her Bachelor (Computer Science) from Khon Kaen University Thailand and her Masters degree in Economics & ICT from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Penpak grew up among agricultural products and herbs and has an extended experience in trading. Used to work as an Oracle-consultant, bus now focusses on Tamnan Tea to make a difference for Thai farmers.
As a child Penpak learned to meditate the traditional way. Local Thai monks guided her on her journey. Till this day Penpak practices meditation and occasionally teaches and coaches people the old-school way, to find their inner balance.
Stephan van IJperen
Stephan got his Bachelor degree in International Business and Masters Degree in Business Administration both in Rotterdam. Loves to connect the dots by designing concepts that work from both a social and commercial perspective. Rather a generalist than a specialist.
This new adventure with Tamnan Tea comes with another passion; training & coaching people for personal and professional growth. Has a life long passion for Eastern martial arts and is still an active practitioner.
Postal address: Visbyerf 27, 3067 DV, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Tamnan Thai Herbs & Tea V.O.F.
K.v.K. nr. : 73587214