ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka plans to spend 1.5 million US dollars to promote Ceylon tea in Europe and the US, while exploring opportunities to get the Ceylon tea trade mark into the readymade beverages market, an official said.
Sri Lanka Tea Board planned to increase the exports to European countries and other Western countries including America in 2023, Pavithri Pieris, The Director promotions at Tea board said.
Sri Lanka is exporting 95 percent of the tea production at the moment.
“We have planned to do our campaign in 20 different countries. Of these we are mainly focusing on Europe and USA this time,” Pieris told reporters.
“Currently we are marketing our products in around 105 markets in the world. At the moment 50 percent of our product goes to Middle East and around 17 percent goes to Russia and other Soviet Union countries. And we have the need to increase our exports to European countries.”
Pieris said, for the campaign, the tea board has allocated around 1.5 million US dollars.
The Tea Board will also initiate another global promotional campaign focusing 12 countries in the world, that was planned before the Russia and Ukraine war.
“Actually we planned to do it in both Russia and Ukraine. But due to the war situation we can’t go there now,” Pieris said.
“And then we will also go to Japan and by fourth quarter next year we are planning to go to Saudi Arabia and Australia.”
She said, Tea Board is also exploring the opportunities on getting to the readymade industry with the Ceylon tea trade mark.
“The Lion logo we give for our products are only for the tea that is being packed here,” Pieris said.
“In Iced tea or tea related drinks in the ready to drink beverage industry that is being served, only the tea packet is being produced in the country while other items are being added in overseas market,”
“We are exploring to see whether we can give the logo to those products as well because that is a big market mostly popular in Europe and north American countries.” (Colombo/ Nov 28/2022)