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| Only the tender new growth
is picked for tea. |
| Photo by James Overly |
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| Tamil ladies in tea country
collecting firewood for home use. |
| Photo by Alex Kersis |
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| 95 percent of Sri Lanka’s
tea pluckers are Tamils. |
| Photo by James Overly |
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| Original machinery used in
a tea factory, now in the Ceylon Tea Museum
in Hantane near Kandy, the world’s first
tea museum. |
| Photo by James Overly |
American tea drinkers, your days in the wilderness
are almost over. No longer will you be at the mercy
of the big multinational tea brands that sell you
cheap, bottom-quality blends from Africa and South
America for your iced tea and tea bags. No longer
will you have to drink trashy herbal “teas,”
which are not teas at all, but concoctions made
from twigs and bark. You will soon experience the
taste of tea that used to be! Quality tea is coming
back, direct from the garden in Ceylon to your teapot.
The tea growers in Sri Lanka, as Ceylon is now known,
have tired of seeing their quality teas abandoned
by the mass producers in favor of cheap, low quality
teas. After all, the large companies got their names
and reputations in the first place by selling high
quality Ceylon tea.
The Sri Lankan tea growers thought they could do little
about the multinationals’ market manipulations,
because with one exception, they had never established
and marketed their own tea brands. Instead, they were
growers who shipped the tea in bulk for blending and
packaging in other countries.
The exception, Dilmah Tea, showed that Sri Lanka could
add value at the point of origin, and sell fresh,
high-quality tea in any market at no extra cost. The
fifteen-year old company is now the third largest
tea company in the world. Theirs is the example the
rest of the Sri Lanka tea industry is about to follow.
The Sri Lanka tea industry has just formed an association
that for the first time brings together everybody
in the tea industry—planters and small holders,
factories, brokers, traders, sellers and exporters.
With funds soon to be supplied by the Asian Development
Bank, the tea industry will have money to overcome
their common deficiency—lack of knowledge of
packaging and marketing.
Sri Lanka remains the largest tea exporter in the
world, exporting some 295 million kilograms of tea
in 2001. China and India have larger tea production,
but in both cases the crops primarily serve to meet
domestic consumption. However, as a result of the
changes in the tea market, and the failure of the
government to adequately capitalize and organize the
tea industry when it was nationalized, the price of
tea in real terms has been declining.
Officials say an objective of the association will
be to reassert Sri Lanka’s position as the top
producer of quality teas. There are plans for the
association to assist with brand marketing, but it
will also assist in promoting generic teas.
The organization foresees a two-pronged strategy to
develop an effective marketing program, and to strengthen
the industry and its exports by developing a quality
assurance program.
The marketing program will seek to establish Sri Lankan
brands, and sell directly to countries like the United
States. Presently, most U.S. imported teas come from
countries that process tea, instead of growing it.
The quality assurance program will certify tea by
type and grade. The association may also develop a
system similar to the French system of controlling
wine names by region. Officials say it is possible
to certify tea by estate and year, as well as by region.
The association will begin marketing efforts in the
United States in April, when officials will make a
presentation in Boston. Association members acknowledge
that the American market presents unique challenges,
but they also know that there is always a market in
the U.S. for quality.
Malik Fernando, Dilmah Tea director, says, “Only
the oldest Americans have ever tasted real quality
tea, and the American preference for tea bags and
iced tea has made it easy for the multinationals to
peddle cheap teas in the U.S.”
“It’s no wonder that coffee dominates the
American market,” he says. “Americans who
only know iced tea and tea from tea bags will be amazed
at the taste of quality tea.”
Fernando says his company plans to enter the U.S.
market within a year or two, and will market its full
line of quality varieties, garden teas, and herbal
infusions, the proper name for so-called “herbal
teas.” |
