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| Sunday, 15 August 2004 |
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Stassen's 'design tea' for prestigious Harrods First time in the world the Stassen Group (SG) will produce and supply the novel tea product "design tea" for the well known British based Harrods Ltd (HL), which will be launched in May 2005 in London. The exclusive, unique and up market product will only be available at the Harrods tea outlets in UK, its Senior Buyer (Tea and Coffee) H.Rahman told the "Sunday Observer" Business. "This would be a tremendous opportunity to showcase Sri Lankan tea in the world with the launch," he said. Rahman being the pioneer in the design tea concept in the world visited Sri Lanka to identify best tea estates for the purpose of processing it. According to him few tea estates have been identified namely Wenture, Kirkoswald, Idalgashinna and Pettiyagala in the up country to obtain green leaf for processing of this unique up market commodity.SG has got best tea estates in the country. "We gave the concept to SG last year and they manufacture and supply exclusively for the company and prices are still in the negotiation stage", he said. The unique feature of this product is that the processing is done manually with quality leaf subjected to 100 per cent hygienical standards. "To produce a 50 g of design tea it will take more than a day even with the assistance of five to six people," HL Senior Buyer said. "We were the first to introduce this type of tea to the world eight years ago in India. The formula or recipe of SG is very much different to the Indian one", Rahman said. HL will buy 40-50 Kg of design tea from each estate, which will take them more than six months to produce, he added. Moreover, SG has also exported different concepts or value added tea for HL before, which is in demand in the UK up market, he said. According to Rahman, HL Chairman Mohommed Al Fayad always requested buyers to visit manufacturing countries like Sri Lanka and India to study the situation and he has a very good knowledge on the Sri Lankan Tea industry.HL is also in the process of introducing this concept to Japan in the future. With the introduction of innovative products to the UK market HL has been able to reverse the trend in the declining tea market,Rahman added. The company is going to have a worldwide spectacular international promotion campaign on Sri Lankan tea before the launch. Sri Lanka has tremendously improved in terms of new ideas and value addition where the tea industry is concerned,he said. HL was started in 1849 as a small tea outlet and has been the most specialist tea company in the UK. Now it has got the biggest tea emporium in the world. (HHS) |
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