Financial Times - Ceylon Royal Teas now aims for other ‘difficult’ markets

One may say that serving tea to the coffee-loving Americans is almost impossible but there are people to prove you wrong. With a few tricks up his sleeve, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, President of the Ceylon Royal Teas, has successfully captured the hearts of the Americans and the Canadians who come back for more tea.

“When I went for my first trade show I realised that the market was not tapped by any Sri Lankan mainly because it was a coffee-drinking country; then I thought I will take up the challenge of selling tea for coffee drinkers,” said Wickramasuriya.

After meticulous research Wickramasuriya realised that the best market there is the gift industry; almost every food gift pack in US had a tea box and he approached the gift packers to supply them with tea.

From there onwards the partnership with the gift packing companies grew and Ceylon Royal Teas now deals with the biggest names in the gift packing industry. According to Wickramasuriya, 90 percent of the food gift packs available in the market in North America today will have one of their tea packs.

Further judging from the phone requests they got, the company also realised that there is a market. Thus they approached the supermarkets and the company’s own brand ‘Chami’ and other products of Ceylon Royal Teas have a strong presence in many of the supermarkets in North America.

One of the marketing strategies in Wickramasuriya’s business books is innovative packaging. The company has its own designer with whom Wickramasuriya works very closely in developing attractive packaging. The consumer in the US market has a preference for large and reusable packing; some of the packs the company has now can be even used as jewelry boxes.

According to Wickramasuriya top class packaging is the key concept. “Our concept is quality products in big attractive packaging, they need it big,” he said with a grin at his factory complex at Horana.

Recalling his early experience in the US, Wickramasuriya said that Americans prefer strong flavoured tea to pure Ceylon tea.

Thus all products of Ceylon Royal Teas are 100 percent value added, flavoured tea. Further herbal and organic tea are catching up in the US market and the company caters to this as well.

The company’s plan for the US and Canadian markets include introducing pure Ceylon tea to the US and Canadian markets.

The company is targeting all the Asians who love a typical cup of tea. Further the company also plans to supply their products to “dollar shops” in the US.

“The US market for all types of tea has grown by over 300 percent in the last year according to the Tea Council of the USA and there are only three to four Sri Lankan companies present and there is room for 300 to 400,” said Wickramasuriya.

The officials of the embassies and missions need to play a more active role in supporting the business community to enter foreign markets. They need to analyse the market and be aware of the development and supply this information to the companies to improve their products, he said. However he complains that this is a very weak area in Sri Lankan embassies.

The company also plans to enter the Australian, Japanese and European markets as well. “We follow a different strategy to the norm; we don’t want to enter the Middle East and Russia, the most tea drinking countries as yet. We want to build our market in the other countries,” said Wickramasuriya.

The company was recently awarded four of the most recognised international certifications – BRC food Certification, 9001:

2000; ISO22000:2005 and the HACCP certifications.