Tea Board acts on IPR violations of Lion Logo in tea

Sustainability in the tea industry would depend on how far the industry would successfully handle the local challenges and the global challenges, according to Lalith Hettiarachchi, Chairman, Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB).

“Locally we have a high cost in pricing in the ever increasing labour, prohibitively increasing fuel and energy costs factories running under capacity. These are not insurmountable provided we do not take political decisions, lay emphasis on productivity and spend more on researching on alternative sources of energy and certain process changes,” he said. He pointed out that global challenges the industry is facing are other beverages, lack of resources to compete with supermarket giants, severe competition from the newly started producers like Kenya, Vietnam or Malawi entering into the orthodox production at lower costs and stringent certifications required by consumer countries for our products such as Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) by countries like Japan and the EU.

When asked whether the industry should resort to mass market and blend with other teas and pay less emphasis on marketing ‘our’ own tea brand, he said that blending has its advantages in selling bulk tea. “It also gives job opportunities to our people if the process is installed locally but the danger is that such blends will pull down our quality in certain instances especially if it so happens that contaminated teas are blended with our superior quality teas. There have been instances of Vietnamese teas entering our shores and suspected of being re-exported in the guise of Ceylon Tea rather than getting re-exported as blended tea,” he noted.

Hettiarachchi pointed it that one way to sustain the export market is to have a very good incentive for exporting value added teas instead of bulk exports. “A kilo of tea that we sell in bulk for US$ 2.50 would fetch more than 10 times on the shelf of a supermarket just by a simple packeting process,” he said, adding that the long term sustainability of the industry will depend on maintaining a healthy replanting level of at least two to three percent and looking after the health of the bush. “If not quality and productivity will drop and the bush will be vulnerable to decease,” he said.

Hettiarachchi said that SLTB always encourages branding and success stories of Dilmah, Mlesna or Akbar in the Middle East are good examples. He stressed that blending with other origin teas can be acceptable so long as we do not compromise quality and lose our identity. “Blends will stay on the shelf or die depending on the success or otherwise of their ability to attract the taste of the consumers,” he added.

Hettiarachchi said ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ is 100 percent Sri Lankan tea packed in Sri Lanka with the Lion Logo which “we have exclusive rights under International Property Rights”. “Whenever this is violated and brought to our notice we take immediate action to bring them to task through our missions abroad. There have been quite a number of such instances,” he said, adding that blends with other origin teas cannot be labelled as ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ with the Lion Logo. “Neither can any blender who has a blending operation outside the shores of Sri Lanka use the Lion Logo for such a blend. In fact no tea that is packeted outside Sri Lanka can use the Lion Logo on the packs even if it is 100 percent Pure Ceylon Tea. We knew only of one such instance in Fiji Islands which has recently been persuaded to stop that operation,” he explained.

He noted that generic promotion of tea is being done by Liptons or Tetleys and that helps the promotion of tea whether it is Ceylon Tea or otherwise, adding that if not for generic promotion, tea can be replaced by some other beverage, Coke or beer or any other fruit drink or substitute synthetic product.