Harrods giving Sri Lankan Tea a heave

Hiran H.Senewiratne

TEA PROMOTION: A prestigious UK department store, Harrods, is planning a major Sri Lankan tea promotion at their stores. This promotional campaign will promote tea that is produced in Stassens' tea gardens, its Tea and Coffee Consultant H. Rahman said.

He said Sri Lankan tea is the cleanest tea in the world and they are expected to increase their tea imports from Sri Lanka with the high demand from all tea drinking communities not only in UK but also all over the world. Currently, they import more than 50,000 kg of specialty tea in bulk form and are expected increase further imports from Stassens.

This year's theme of the promotion is "Anything Possible" and they will mainly promote the designer tea variety, "Eagle Nest", which is the most expensive brand.

Rahman was in Sri Lanka to visit various tea gardens, like Pettiyagala and Idalgashinna, which produce the 'Eagle Nest' variety. This designer tea is mainly targeted at tea connoisseurs in UK. This is a special feature, which cannot be produced, in large quantities and as such around 30 kg to 50 kg of hand grown tea from the Idelgashinna tea garden would be promoted under this brand name.

He also said their Chairman Mohammed Al Fayed's vision is to go for the beat and Sri Lankan tea is considered the best in quality. He also said that they also re-export Sri Lankan tea to Japan, which also helps to promote pure Sri Lankan tea.

Rahman who said that they want to promote orthodox tea in their department stores to give the tea drinking community and the world a real flavour added that it shows that people still like to taste this type of tea.

Sri Lankan tea is one of the best and cleanest teas in the world and all tea factories are up to international standards. The factories are getting modernised as well.

He said that they are also promoting the packaging industry and they directly import tea chests from Sri Lanka, as they have a high standard.

In 2007 Harrods is planning a designer tea promotion, which has become the annual event in their calendar.