Fannings are small pieces of tea

Tea

Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...

 that are left over after higher grades of tea are gathered to be sold. Fannings with extremely small particles are sometimes called dusts

Dust (tea)

Dust tea is a low-quality grade of fine grained black tea. Traditionally these were treated as the rejects of the manufacturing process in making high quality leaf tea like the Orange Pekoe. When leaves break or get crushed during the manufacturing process they are variously labelled as Broken...

. Fannings and dusts are considered the lowest grades of tea, separated from broken-leaf teas which have larger pieces of the leaves. However, the fannings of expensive teas can still be more expensive and more flavorful than whole leaves of cheaper teas.

Because of the small size of the particles, a tea infuser

Tea infuser

A tea infuser is a device in which loose tea leaves are placed for steeping, usually in a cup; it is often called a teaball or tea maker, and sometimes a tea egg. The tea infuser gained popularity in the first half of the 19th century...

 is typically used to brew fannings. Fannings are also typically used in most tea bags, although some companies sell tea bags containing whole-leaf tea.

Some exporters focus primarily on broken leaf teas, fannings, and dusts.