Financial Times

Sri Lankan iced tea product tastes success in US market
Bogawantalawa Tea Estates Ltd., Sri Lanka's premier tea grower won the coveted first place for best commercially brewed black iced tea at the world's largest tea show - World Tea Expo held in Las Vegas, USA recently, the Sri Lankan company said in a statement. It was represented by its business partner in North America, Walter's Bay who markets the BTEL teas under the joint brand "Bogawantalawa Walter's Bay" in the highly competitive North American markets. This award has opened the doors for Sri Lanka to supply quality Ceylon premium teas to 80 per cent of the $6 billion US tea market occupied by the iced tea category.

A majority of US tea drinkers, a rapidly growing tea market in the world following the new findings by numerous scientists that tea is a beverage containing health-giving anti-oxidants, consume their teas in the form of iced-tea.

Sanjaya Widyaratna, a Sri Lankan who is the CEO of the Austin, Texas based Walter's Bay said Bogawantalawa was able to design an ideal flavour profile for the commercial iced tea market of the US within two and one half years. He told the judges of the iced tea competition that their brand of black tea for iced tea was a quality tea hand plucked and unblended 100 per cent certified pure Ceylon tea from Bogawantalawa. He said they avoided paper bags that adversely affected the flavour and used packaging material made out of a special kind of polypropelene material that filtered the tea retaining all its original flavours without changing it.

Widyaratne said to produce the package Walter's Bay partnered with several brewing machine companies and "Cirqua" one of the largest water companies of the USA that provided a water filtering system that retained the flavor-quality of the premium tea used for the purpose.

Angelo Wickramasooriya, Vice President Marketing of Walter's Bay Bogawantalawa, said the company is planning this kind of iced tea project globally to take it as a platform for premium quality teas of Sri Lanka.

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