Sri Lanka to protect locally grown Tea

The Government has discouraged contaminating Sri Lanka Tea with imported low quality teas for export purposes.

Secretary to the Treasury Dr. P.B.Jayasundera has strongly emphasized that one of the products we should uncompromisingly preserve and protect is Sri Lankan tea.  He has made this statement speakng to over 200 foreign delegates at the biennial Dilmah Tea Global Distributor Conference in Colombo yesterday.

Emphatically rebutting arguments made by the Tea Industry Association (TEA) that the Government should allow the importation of cheap low-quality teas for blending with Sri Lankan tea, Dr. Jayasundera has exclaimed that Sri Lanka should not permit our product to be used in that manner.

Dr. Jayasundera has said that Sri Lanka has a tremendous comparative advantage in tea and can make it a three billion dollar industry in the next 10 years. Echoing these sentiments, key stakeholders of the tea industry, which directly supports over 2.5 million Sri Lankans, warned against the Tea Industry Association (TEA)’s attempts to destroy the world-renowned ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ brand by lobbying for the adulteration of this premium beverage.

Tea market sources said that the TEA, which is behind the effort to import cheap low-quality teas for blending and re-exporting from Sri Lanka, comprise entirely of tea exporters and does not represent the hundreds of thousands of growers and workers who help sustain one of the country’s most important industries.

They said that for the past few years, the TEA has attempted to argue that the relatively high cost of Ceylon Tea prevents local players from competing with international brands.

They pointed out that contrary to this argument, the success of Dilmah, a truly global ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ brand, and other Sri Lankan-owned brands, stands in stark contrast to this claim. After all, Dilmah’s premium single-origin pure Ceylon Tea has captured significant market share at the top end of key markets almost entirely through the use of the inimitable ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ brand platform.

Instead of building powerful Sri Lankan-owned premium brands that can leverage the nation’s unbeatable reputation for quality tea while being marketed at a premium price, many exporters have unfortunately been content either to serve as suppliers and packers for foreign giants or to simply export bulk tea as a commodity.

 
TEA has admitted that only 12 per cent of exports are under Sri Lankan-owned brands. The remaining exports are under foreign brands or in bulk, raw form. They have said that these foreign brand owners constantly pressure suppliers to reduce prices, which leads, in turn, to price pressure on tea growers.

Refuting the TEA’s attempt to draw a comparison between the tea and apparel industry, which allows the duty free import of raw material, Dr. Jayasundera has made it clear that the two industries are markedly different, noting that tea is the opposite of the apparel industry, as everything is locally available, such as the climatic advantages of growing various types of tea as well as the smallholders who grow over 70 per cent of ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’. He has pointed out that despite that tea is not a large export as apparel.   

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Industry experts have repeatedly warned that the priceless image of ‘Pure Ceylon Tea,’ built up over more than a century, would be irreparably damaged if the free importation of foreign black teas was allowed. It has been pointed out that some multinational tea brands use Chinese-grown teas that contain dangerous levels of pesticides and toxins, and if such teas are blended with fine Sri Lankan teas, which are considered the purest due to stringent controls on growers, the ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ brand may be destroyed forever.(niz)