After four years of preparations, the Ceylon tea promotional campaign for Ukraine is set to be launched this month while campaigns for Japan and China are set to take place next year, according to the Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB). This is the second stop in Sri Lanka’s long-awaited global tea promotional campaign for 12 countries which kicked off on 25 September in Moscow, Russia. According to the SLTB, this is the first time Sri Lanka is conducting such a global tea promotional campaign of this scale. According to SLTB Chairman Lucille Wijewardena, the Ukrainian promotional campaign will be held from 23-27 this month at a cost of Rs. 200 million. It will be comparatively smaller than the Russian campaign. Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, Wijewardena noted that the promotional campaigns for Japan and China are unlikely to be held this year, owing to preparatory work that needs to be done before entering such big markets. “The tea promotional campaign in Japan will be held somewhere around March next year,” Wijewardena noted. He added that the format of all 12 promotional campaigns will remain the same even though the scale might differ from one country to another, and the final global campaign under this programme will be held in 2021. The rest of the countries in line are the US, Turkey, Australia, UAE, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Chile and the money allocated for the promotions is Rs. 4.5 billion. In March 2018, the SLTB signed a Rs. 219 million media contract with Dentsu Grant for this promotional purpose. Amongst the 12 countries, Turkey was the second largest importer of Sri Lankan tea in 2018 next to Iraq with over 35,000 MT of tea being exported. Turkey was followed by Russia, Iran, Libya, and UAE with 30,580 MT, 23,914 MT, 13,686 MT, and 11,077 MT, respectively. Tea exports to Germany were 6,042 MT in 2018 while exports to Saudi Arabia were 5,590 MT. Wijewardena noted that the campaigns would not reflect an immediate increase in the Sri Lankan tea exports, but would obviously have an impact in the long run. However, the SLTB expects this year’s tea exports to be over $ 1.5 billion compared to $ 1.4 billion last year.

Russia relaxes fumigation requirement for Ceylon tea

In a major boost for Sri Lanka’s tea exporters, Russia has stated that Sri Lanka no longer needs to fumigate empty containers prior to stuffing tea for shipment to Russia, a mandatory requirement which had made Ceylon tea less competitive in the Russian market. Since December 2017, due to the alleged detection of a “kappra beetle” in the outer packaging of a container of Ceylon tea bound for Russia, the two nations took a mutual decision to fumigate each and every empty container prior to stuffing tea from Sri Lanka for shipment to Russia. This mandatory requirement was strictly enforced by the National Plant Quarantine Division of the Ministry of Agriculture in Sri Lanka for almost two years. This was a costly and time consuming exercise (a minimum of 72 hours of quarantine is necessary prior releasing the empty container for stuffing) for the export trade in Sri Lanka, a major handicap for Ceylon tea in a highly competitive Russian market dominated by local Russian brands. Furthermore, although the fumigation process was undertaken by Sri Lanka from January 2018 until September 2019, not a single “khappra beetle” or any such traces were found. This decision to relax the requirement was reached when experts from SLTB and the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Moscow concluded a strategic meeting with a team of officials from the Federal Services for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture in accordance with the advice of Minister of Plantation Industries Navin Dissanayake. “This intervention is considered an encouraging success and a positive boost for the exporters of Ceylon tea to the Russian Federation. Further, achieving this breakthrough in the background of the launch of the Ceylon tea global campaign in the Russian Federation is a significant achievement, particularly due to the hard work put in by the Tea Promotion Division of the SLTB,” the Ministry of Plantation Industries said in a media communiqué. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the recent launch of the global campaign for Ceylon tea in Russia. In this connection, the Federal Services for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance in Russia issued a circular to Russian Customs posts and all other relevant authorities to implement the agreed decision from 1 October 2019.