Category: Agriculture

July 23, 2013 (LBO) – Tea production was down 4.29 percent to 24.69 million kilograms in June 2013 from a year earlier, Sri Lanka Tea Board data showed, amid warnings from tea companies that heavy rains were reducing output.The sharpest drop was seen in high grown elevations with production down 19 percent to 4.56 million […]

July 18, 2013 (LBO) – An agri business fair in Killinochchi, a former war zone in the northern Sri Lanka is ready to open on July 26 with all stalls filled, its organizers said.The event has been supported backed by the Governor of the Northern Province, the military and state officials, the organizers said. The […]

July 16, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s ‘Ceylon Tea’ has been showcased at a specialty food fair in the in the US city of New York, the island’s embassy said. Representatives of the US tea trade, officials from the US Tea Council and media had attended a networking dinner on July 01. On July 02, […]

July 09, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea crop has been hit badly by heavy rain in June with some estates seeing production falling to less than half and losses in some firms mounting to 100 million rupees, an industry association said.The Ceylon Planters’ Association of Ceylon, representing about two dozen large firms said due […]

July 09, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has expanded rubber cultivation into the non-traditional dryer regions of the island™s Eastern and Northern regions with the crop showing high yields in several pilot projects, a senior official said. “We have introduced rubber into the Eastern and Northern region,” Gamini Seneviratne, director, Rubber Research Institute of Sri […]

July 04, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s state-run Milco (Pvt) Ltd, a dairy products firm, is modernizing it factories with a 5.5 billion rupee credit structured by UK’s HSBC banking group, a finance ministry report showed. Milco markets and sells ‘Highland’ branded milk powder, liquid milk, ice cream and cheese. HSBC has previously helped channel […]

July 01, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has approved a 2.5 million US dollar project to farm Barramundi or Asian Sea Bass off the coast of Trincomalee in North Eastern Sri Lanka, the state investment promotion agency said. Oceanpick, a Sri Lankan firm will partner with a Scottish firm to farm the fish in cages, […]

June 21, 2013 (LBO) – Elpitiya Plantations Plc, a unit of Sri Lanka’s Aitken Spence group said it had boosted tea yields and diversified into cinnamon oil palm and oil milling, allowing it to boost profits.In the year to March 2013, 11 percent of its 2.8 billion rupees in revenues came from palm oil as […]

June 19, 2013 (LBO) – Farmers in Sri Lanka’s former war zones in the North and East are cultivating more land but need modern technology to improve yields, officials who are organizing a trade show to link them to buyers said.Under tariff protection, where prices are higher than the rest of the world, there is […]

June 14, 2014 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is expecting to have a vessel monitoring system operating within five months which will provide up to date weather information to fishermen and reduce loss of life, fisheries minister Rajitha Senaratne said.But warnings will be disseminated through the ‘Sayura’ a fishermen’s radio channel and other media, Senaratne said. […]

June 11, 2013 (AFP) – The death toll in Sri Lanka from strong monsoon winds and heavy rains rose to 54, as the government announced on Tuesday new safety requirements for small fishing boats.The minister said small boats which usually go out to sea at night and return at dawn were not regulated and did […]

June 10, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has come second after Bangladesh for concentrations of cadmium in a listing of 12 countries where rice was tested for toxic metals, a media report said.Cadmium had been linked to a mysterious kidney disease of which the original are still not conclusively known (chronic kidney disease of unknown […]