Cinnamon campaign: Involve ‘yourselves’ with customers without others doing it, local companies told
When ‘Cinnamon to the World’ campaign was launched this week in Colombo, the son who carries the torch of his father in one of the biggest success stories in Sri Lanka pertaining to the introduction of ‘single origin pure Ceylon Tea’, came forward to offer advice to the cinnamon industry.
Malik J. Fernando, Director, MJF Group, son of legendary Merril J. Fernando who single-handedly established the identity of ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ around the globe, told cinnamon producers and exporters to “take the product yourself to the consumers around the world and not depend on others to do this job”.
He was addressing the technical session subsequent to the opening ceremony.
The National Development Bank (NDB) has ventured to pioneer ‘Cinnamon to the World’ as a part of its continued efforts to promote the development of export oriented crops. At the event a website ‘www.cinnamontotheworld.com+’ was also launched. Rajendra Theagarajah, CEO, NDB said that their bank is dedicated to foster national development and has continuously placed special emphasis on the export sector, given its importance to the national economy.
He said that the bank aims to support selected industries such as tea, handloom and mask making. The long term endeavour to support the cinnamon sector, he said is a continuation of their allegiance for developing the export potential of the country. Mr. Fernando said that with his father’s experience there nothing like doing things oneself and that would be the most successful way. He explained how his father strenuously and labouriously for long years struggled to establish a name in the world that best tea originated in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), one of the great legacies that the British left in this country.
He said that his father did not depend on anybody else and did things by himself. When the others diluted the quality of Ceylon Tea with other imported cheap low quality tea, he said his father’s version has throughout been that the future of the country’s tea industry was to inculcate in the minds of the consumers around the world that the best tea originated from Ceylon only and he was at the task all the time. His father, Mr. Fernando said has accomplished this task fairly and squarely.
Mr. Fernando said that his father valued the consumer touch very dear to his heart and he used to communicate and whenever possible meet the consumers in faraway places in the world. He said that even now his father devotes lot of time in communicating with the customers through e-mail, and suggested to take a cue from his father which is the way forward and bound to be successful.
At the panel discussion where queries from the audience was entertained, in answer to a query, Mr. Fernando stressed the point that it is always better to do things by themselves and said that tea industry people have contributed some funds to the government for tea promotion but these funds appear to have been stuck somewhere and still not been used for the desired purpose. Therefore he advised the cinnamon producers to join together, pool the funds together and launch their promotional campaign by themselves.
Two others who took part in the technical session also shared valuable information. Udena Wickramasooriya, Director, Brandix gave an epic insight of how Brandix has achieved the pinnacle of success and leadership in the garmentindustry – the innovative approaches and through them how they made remarkable contributions to preserve the environment.
Shanka Dharmapala, Technical Analyst/National Expert, WTO-UNIDO – TSC Cinnamon Project cautioned the cinnamon industry of how critical maintaining the quality of the product, because there are stringent food safety methods imposed.