Employee shortage, bane to tea industry

Indunil Hewage

A significant improvement in the local corporate tea plantation sector has not been observed during the last couple of years and sector is currently faced with low productivity, high cost of production, inadequate fertilizer applications, acquisition of land and low profitability. This shows that long term viability of industry is in doubt.

The long term sustainability of the tea sector depends upon factors such as external demand shifts, competition from competing countries, internal cost trends, technological improvements and reinvestment which are uncontrollable in nature.

The plantation sector may not be able to exert influence over some of the external factors, but does not have control over many internal factors such as productivity, domestic costs of production, replanting, quality improvement etc, the Export Development Board said.

Aging soil and plants, high replanting cost, shortage of employees from superintendents to tea pluckers, low returns on re-investments than dividends from other sources and low cost of production and effective marketing strategies, inconsistent policies are some of the key challenges faced by the local tea industry.

Lack of high skill labour, low labour productivity, under efficient technical facility and lack of trained specialists, poor operation control procedures and quality control techniques,lack of research and development ,innovations and technology inputs, non availability of third party certification and material testing facilities are the other issues faced by the industry.