Sri Lanka’s tea export incomes for 2009 are expected to cross the US$ 1 billion mark, despite a large output drop of 29 million kilos within the year.“We expect export earnings for 2009 to be around US$ 1.3 billion despite the drop in export volumes,” said the Director of Promotions at the Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB), Hasitha de Alwis.
The Tea Board says the strong export earnings are due to higher prices fetched by Ceylon Tea in international markets. Tea prices did well in 2009 because of a global shortage of tea. In Sri Lanka too, tea outputs nosedived in 2009 because of extended drought in tea growing areas.
“Our tea export volumes reduced in 2009, compared to 2008, because of the nearly 29 million kilo production drop. But, on the other hand, we also saw good prices for tea.
So the drop in production will not cause a loss in value terms. We exceeded the US$ 1 billion mark by November 2009,” said Mr de Alwis.
Marketing plan
Meanwhile the Tea Board is also investing Rs 3 million to develop a strategy to increase tea export incomes. This week the Tea Board signed an agreement with MTI Consulting, a boutique management consultancy, to develop a marketing strategy for Ceylon Tea. “We are investing Rs 3 million into developing a new marketing strategy. The strategy will be developed by researching into export markets, to look at how and where we can increase our export incomes. We hope to have a draft strategy document ready after about 3 months of starting the project,” said the Chairman of the Tea Board, Lalith Hettiarachchi.
The main focus is on increasing value addition and brand building. “The main objective of the strategy is to increase value added exports and to build Sri Lankan brands. At this point we still have very few globally recognised Sri Lankan tea brands.
So we will see how this can be increased because the returns are much higher than generic exports,” said Mr de Alwis.
MTI says it will start strategy development with a global scanning process. “Our process starts with an intensive global scan that will cover consumers, the demand chain, channels, supply chain, brand owners and tea producers, including relevant cross-industry learning’s.
Based on the scan, the strategy formulation process will begin, with active involvement by the industry and will evaluate all the strategic routes available to SLTB and Ceylon Tea.
Sustainability as a strategy driver will be an integral part of this exercise,” said a statement from MTI. |
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