Food-safe packaging for premium tea gifts: what must touch the tea, and what can stay decorative

A premium tea gift box has two kinds of parts. Some parts touch the tea. The rest only make the gift look good.

The parts that touch the tea must be food grade, with a lab certificate you keep on file. These are the tea bag or pyramid mesh, the inner pouch, the tin or glass jar, any paper sachet and any liner. Everything else, i.e. the printed outer box, a wooden chest, a fabric wrap, the ribbon, can be chosen for looks, as long as a sealed food-grade pack sits between it and the tea. And it must not smell, because tea takes on smells very easily.

That one line, "a sealed food-grade pack between the tea and the decoration", settles most of the design questions in a tea gift box.

We make films, tapes and paper packaging at Jagannath Polymers in Jaipur, and we export to 20+ countries. I know packaging materials well. I am not a tea taster, and the shelf life of your blend is something your own tests must decide.

What does the law say about tea packaging?

The rule for every food in India, tea included, is the FSS (Packaging) Regulations, 2018. We read the consolidated text on the FSSAI website, Version V, dated 2 April 2025.

Four lines in it shape a tea gift box.

1. Regulation 3(2). Any material that comes in direct contact with food, or is likely to, must be food grade.
2. Regulation 2(1)(b). Food grade means the material must not endanger health or cause an unacceptable change in the food's composition or its "organoleptic characteristics", which means its taste, smell and feel.
3. Regulation 3(10). The printed surface of packaging must not come into direct contact with food.
4. Regulation 3(14). The food business must hold a certificate of conformity from a NABL-accredited lab for each material, or layer, that touches the food.

Read point 2 again with tea in mind. A box that makes your Darjeeling smell of glue fails the definition, even if nothing harmful moved into it. For tea, I think that is the line that matters most.

Which parts touch the tea, and what to ask for

Here is how we would map a typical gift box. The standards come from the schedules in the same regulations.

Every plastic layer that touches tea must pass the overall migration limit of 60 mg/kg or 10 mg/dm² under IS 9845, with no visible colour migration (regulation 4(4)(b)). Coloured plastic needs pigments that meet IS 9833 (regulation 4(4)(d)). Inks on food packages must meet IS 15495 (regulation 3(9)).

What about tea bag paper and plant-based mesh?

This is the gap I would flag to any tea brand. Filter paper for tea bags and plant-based meshes, such as PLA, are not named in the Indian schedules at all.

Regulation 3(1) has a proviso for exactly this case. Where Indian Standards are not available, relevant international standards may be complied with. So ask your tea bag supplier which international standard their paper or mesh meets, and for the test report that proves it. If they cannot name one, I would choose a different supplier.

The inner pouch is the real gift wrap

In most premium tea boxes, the inner pouch does all the food-safety work. So we spend the most time on it.

Ask for a pouch that seals fully, not just one that folds over. A heat-sealed pouch with a zipper keeps air and moisture out after the customer opens it, and it gives you a clean barrier between the tea and any decorative layer. A pouch with a foil or metallised layer also keeps light out, and many tea makers like that for delicate leaf.

Ask for the structure as a list from outside to inside, with the thickness of each layer. And ask which face is printed. Print should sit on the outside, or be buried inside the laminate, never on the face that touches the leaf.

One small thing we would add to every tea order. Ask for the pouches to be packed in sealed polythene inside the carton. Empty pouches stored open in a godown near spices or cleaning liquids can pick up smells before they ever meet your tea.

Can the outer box be anything I like?

Almost.

If the tea is sealed in a food-grade pouch, tin or jar, the outer box is not a food-contact material. You can choose rigid board, printed duplex, a wooden chest, handmade paper or a fabric wrap, purely for looks.

Three limits still apply.

1. Smell. Strong-smelling inks, solvent-based glues, freshly cut wood, scented ribbons and perfumed tissue can all reach the tea over weeks in a warm shop. A sealed foil pouch slows this down a lot. A paper sachet or a loosely closed tin does not.
2. Fasteners. On 12 June 2026, FSSAI issued an advisory directing all food businesses to stop using metallic pins, wires or any other such material to seal, fasten or secure food and food packaging. So no stapled ribbons, no stapled tags, and no staple pins on tea bags. Ask your tea bag maker how the string and tag are fixed.
3. The label. Regulation 4(8) of the FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020 (FSSAI, Version II, 29 December 2021) says that if an outer box is displayed for retail sale, it must also carry all the declarations required on the pack inside. The only exception is a transparent outer through which those declarations can be read. A beautiful gift box sold off a shelf still needs its full label, so plan a panel for it. Our guide to FSSAI labelling for sweet shops explains what goes on it.

Mistakes I would avoid

Most of these come from the same habit, choosing the box first and the tea pack last.

1. Loose tea poured straight into a lined wooden box. The liner is often paper glued to the wood, and nobody knows what the glue is.
2. A printed card insert placed directly on top of loose leaf in a tin. That is printed surface on food, which regulation 3(10) does not allow.
3. A fabric potli with no inner pouch. It looks lovely, but the tea is open to air and moisture from the first day.
4. Recycled grey board as an inner tray that touches the leaf. Recycled fibre can carry traces of old inks, and it has no place against food.
5. Reusing tins from an old batch. Regulation 3(7) says once-used tin containers must not be reused for packing food.

Each of these is easy to fix at the design stage. After 2,000 boxes are printed, it becomes very expensive.

One check you can do this week

This is a smell check, and I trust it more than most people expect.

Take three clean, airtight glass jars. Put a spoon of your tea in each. In the first, add nothing. In the second, add a piece of the outer box, the insert and the ribbon. In the third, add a piece of the inner pouch or tin you plan to use. Close all three and leave them in a warm room for three days.

Then brew the tea from each jar the same way and taste them side by side, ideally with someone who does not know which is which. If the second or third cup tastes or smells different from the first, something in your box is giving off odour. Find which part it is before you order in bulk.

It is not a lab test. It does tell you, for the price of a few spoons of tea, what your customer will notice first.

If you are planning boxes for the festive season, our guide to planning Diwali and wedding gift boxes covers the timeline. Ask your supplier for the certificates for each food-contact part before you sign off the artwork.