Ceylon tea to celebrate 150 years of history in style

Ceylon tea will be commemorating its 150 years of rich history in style, with numerous events and celebrations lined up for 2017, the industry stakeholders said yesterday.

“We want to showcase and highlight Ceylon tea for what it is.

The prestige, culture and the pristine nature of our tea industry,” Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake said at a media briefing on the 150th anniversary.

According to Ceylon Tea Traders’ Association Chairman Anselm Perera, the celebrations, co-ordinated by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, will kick off with the unveiling of a sculpted bust of the Father of Ceylon Tea, James Taylor, at the Sri Lanka Tea Board head office. Taylor, a Scotsman, started planting tea at the Loolecondera Estate in 1867, after the local coffee crop was almost completely wiped out by a blight. Mduring the British colonial era, tea had contributed to 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and although exports have diversified recently, even in 2015, tea contributed US $ 1.34 billion of the US $ 10.51 billion total exports, despite being the worst year for tea in recent times. A unique global tea party—one of the world’s largest—will be celebrated across the world at Sri Lankan diplomatic missions in key Ceylon tea drinking markets and potential growth markets, with Ceylon tea served with a special biscuit made for the occasion by Maliban Biscuit Manufactories.

The celebrations in 2017 will also include the launch of a stamp and a first day cover, a commemorative book, a Rs.10 coin, a grand tea auction, education fairs in tea producing regions, competitions for all stakeholders, an international tea festival and the Colombo Tea Convention, to name just a few.

Despite recent setbacks, Dissanayake noted that the industry has been strong enough to absorb the shocks and that the next 150 years of Ceylon tea will see the industry transforming to meet the fast-changing international trends, with high quality ensured through regulations. Perera added that the industry is venturing into new products such as pyramid tea bags and iced tea to meet the current global trends but that it is also mulling whether to become a tea producer with an air of exclusivity, by cutting down all production except for premium leaves, in order to surmount labour challenges inherent to the industry.

The industry supports nearly two million Sri Lankans, with a quarter of a million workers and 750,000 family members supported just by the large regional plantation companies, though labour has been migrating out of the industry, which Sri Lanka Tea Board Chairman Rohan Pethiyagoda said was a positive sign for the rest of the Sri Lankan economy.