Category: Agriculture

Apr 20, 2012 (LBO) – China’s Sinohydro Corp. has won a 252 million US dollar contract to build a dam providing water and hydropower in north-central Sri Lanka. A statement said the decision to award the contract to build the headworks of Moragahakanda Reservoir to the Chinese state-owned hydropower engineering and construction company was made […]

Apr 19, 2012 (LBO) – Margins in Sri Lanka’s poultry industry would narrow amid higher capacity but per person chicken consumption would continue to grow, a top poultry firm in the island has said. Three acre farms, a unit of Ceylon Grain Elevators, which is Sri Lanka’s largest day old chick producer said per capita […]

April 12, 2012 (LBO) – Prices of Sri Lanka’s low grown teas, which account for the bulk of the crop, rose again at last week’s auction and are now well above last year’s levels, brokers said. “In view of the present adverse weather conditions, global crop production looks bearish with Kenya, Sri Lanka and North […]

April 10, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lankan plantation company Kotagala Plantations plans to plant 20,000 hectares of rubber in Cambodia, it said in a stock exchange filing. Kotagala Plantations has 12 tea and 11 rubber plantations in Sri Lanka. It has eight rubber manufacturing units, producing pale crepe and sole crepe. The total value of […]

April 03, 2012 (LBO) – Small farmers making rubber in Sri Lanka might be able to get better prices by pooling their efforts and introducing traceability systems that would ensure guaranteed quality to buyers, researchers have found. In Sri Lanka, Lokanathan said about 43 percent of the rubber output is sold as ‘ribbed smoked sheets’ […]

Mar 30, 2012 (LBO) – Tea production in Sri Lanka has been reduced by bad weather with crops in other key origins like Kenya and India also down for the same reason, brokers said. “Due to the extremely hot and humid conditions, plantations are experiencing dwindling intakes,” tea brokers John Keells said. “It is reported […]

Mar 29, 2012 (LBO) – Prices of Sri Lankan tea, especially those grown at low elevations, perked up at this week’s auction, giving some relief to producers battered by rising costs and reduced demand in key markets. “The 3.0 million kilos of low grown teas that came under the hammer this week met with excellent […]

Mar 26, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tea prices perked up after the recent depreciation of the rupee against the dollar but unrest in the Middle East, a big market, will act as a drag on further increases, brokers said. “The general trend of declining prices witnessed from the second half of 2011 is expected […]

Mar 22, 2012 (LBO) – Tea production in Sri Lanka in February 2012 fell compared with last year with much of the fall coming from low grown types harvested by small farmers, according to the Tea Board. Low grown teas are produced mainly by small holders who have been hit hard by lower demand from […]

Mar 19, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is one of the countries in South Asia whose poor would suffer if prices of commodities like wheat rise further, the Asia Development Bank (ADB) said in a new report. But the study said rapid population growth, changing food consumption patterns linked to higher incomes, and stagnating agricultural […]

Mar 16, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea trade has warned that tea export orders and prices could fall in the months ahead as crops rise and consumption falls off in key markets. And smallholders, whose returns have been sharply diminishing, find that their operations are increasingly becoming financially unsustainable, the CTTA said. “The prognosis […]

Mar 15, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea industry has called for urgent improvements in productivity and new markets to ride out volatility in major Middle Eastern markets that continue to dampen tea export earnings. January and February tea prices have averaged about 40 rupees a kilo below that of January February 2011. While there […]