Category: Agriculture

July 01, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea exports in May 2011 rose five percent to 25 million kilos from a year ago with earnings also up six percent to 12. 8 billion rupees, brokers said. Exports of tea packets, on which earnings are more than bulk exports. were also up after a change in […]

July 01, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka will launch a globally recognized industry standard for Ceylon Tea early next year addressing consumer concerns, including ethical trade and environmental issues, Ceylon Tea Traders Association Chairman Avi de Silva said. If a competitor country does not have any such laws, their firms will still be compliant with […]

June 22, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka aims to bring in new laws restricting sale of coconut land to extents below five acres under efforts to prevent further reduction of acreage and to increase crops, an official said. Minister of coconut development Jagath Pushpakumara said the new laws would be introduced in parliament in about […]

June 22, 2011 (LBO) – Tea production in Sri Lanka in May 2011 fell 5. 3 percent to 32 million kilos from a year ago, according to statistics released by the Tea Board. The shortfall in production came from the high and medium elevations while low grown teas, which make up the bulk of the […]

June 16, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Bairaha Farms, a poultry firm said it is building a 360 million rupee modern broiler farm in the northwestern Puttalam district to increase its production by 15 percent over the next three years. In 2010 prices surged. “Being of a cyclical nature, the poultry business is characterised by […]

June 12, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has earned 22. 1 billion rupees from taxes imposed on several basic foods imported in to country in 2009, with sugar and milk powder bringing in the most amount of money, a media report said. The Island newspaper said the information was tabled in parliament in response to […]

June 10, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Haycarb has called for a long-term strategy to expand coconut plantations to ensure raw material availability to make activated carbon and said it is diversifying into wood- and coal-based carbons. Shortages of coconut shell charcoal, which account for almost 65 percent of the firm’s cost of production, and […]

DUBAI, June 8, 2011 (AFP) – Exotic and organic teas are wooing tea drinkers and challenging traditional black tea’s dominance as never before, tea industry experts say, as a tea factory in Dubai bids to become the world’s largest. The shift in global tea-drinking trends is felt at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, despite it […]

June 07, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Expolanka Holdings group said a lentils splitting plant owned by a subsidiary has been fully automated in a 350,000 US dollar upgrade designed to meet increasing local and international demand. The upgrade of the plant, located in Wellampitiya in Colombo, included the addition of a colour sorting machine […]

June 06, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s regional plantations companies and estate labour unions have agreed to renew a two-year wage deal with a worker’s basic wage being raised to 380 rupees from 285 previously. Muthu Sivalingam, president of the Ceylon Workers Congress, the biggest union, told Vimasuma.com, our sister news website, that under the […]

June 05, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Fisheries Corporation, a state enterprise that retails fish has lost 59 million rupees in 2010 and has to better manage assets such as cold stores and freezer trucks, a finance ministry report said. The firm had the challenge of playing a ‘market stabilizer’ role with a market […]

May 30, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Kegalle Plantations, which gets most of its revenues from rubber, said profits rose 14 percent to 270 million rupees with revenues growing 30 percent to 900 million rupees. Tea is a most labour intensive crop compared with rubber or coconut. The firm was charged 197 million rupees in […]