Category: Agriculture

May 17, 2010 (LBO) – High rubber and palm oil prices helped Sri Lanka’s Agalawatte Plantations make a net profit of 36 million rupees in the March 2010 quarter compared with a loss of 68 million rupees the year before, latest accounts showed. Agalawatte Plantations’ tea business made a small gross profit of 1.9 million […]

May 14, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tea prices fell at this week’s Colombo auctions owing to bigger quantities and lower quality and are likely to fall further in line with seasonal trends, brokers said. Prices of most teas from both the main low grown sector, which accounts for the bulk of the crop, and […]

May 07, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tea export earnings in the three months to March 2010 hit a new high in rupee terms although lower volumes were shipped compared with recent years, brokers said. Forbes & Walker Tea Brokers said Sri Lanka’s tea exports in March 2010 fell by about five million kilos to […]

May 04, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s total tea production, including green tea, rose 7. 8 percent to 20 million kilos in March 2010 from a year ago when output was hit by drought and the effects of the global commodities crash. Tea Board data showed that most of the increase in output in March […]

Apr 23, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s dairy sector is improving with strong competition among processors expanding demand for milk and helping farmers, the US Agency for International Development said. USAID has boosted the sector by partnering with a private company to increase milk production, it said in a statement. A USAID study showed that […]

Apr 17, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s plantations companies needs financial support to replant ageing trees as production costs rose, an industry official said as the state held back proceeds from an industry development levy. Dhamitha Perera, chairman of the Planters’ Association which represents corporate tea producers, said the costs of replanting estates with old […]

Apr 10, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tea prices have fallen after hitting record highs at recent auctions, although still higher than last year, squeezing profit margins of producers faced with rising costs, brokers said. While prices of high grown teas made largely by plantations companies fell, those of low grown teas, cultivated mainly by […]

Apr 06, 2010 (LBO) – A project to help farmers in Sri Lanka’s former war zone by Hayleys, a big exporter of gherkins to global food chains, has won an award from its partner, the US Agency for International Development. A USAID statement said the project was chosen from 700 such initiatives around the world […]

Apr 02, 2010 (LBO) – Lanka Milk Foods (LMF), a milk powder packer which is part of Sri Lanka’s Distilleries group, said it has begun production at a new plant with a capacity of 9.5 million litres of cow milk. LMF acquired them in 2001 when it bought 90 percent of the shares of Ambewela […]

April 01, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s listed Bogowantalawa Tea Estates said it was starting a two million dollar iced tea unit with a US firm in which the firm would take up a 25 percent stake. The joint venture will export packaged iced tea to the United States. The company said it was teaming […]

Mar 31, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Malwatte Valley Plantations said 2009 annual profits fell 99.3 percent to 2.15 million rupees from a year ago with a big loss in the December quarter on higher wage costs and gratuity provisions. Its financial results filed with the Colombo stock exchange showed December quarter losses shot up […]

QIXINGCUN, March 29, 2010 (AFP) – Peasant farmer Dong Guicheng wakes up every morning hoping for rain, but each day a crippling drought instead brings more disappointment and desperation. In a scene repeated by millions of people in a vast area of China’s parched southwest, Dong treks daily to a dwindling reservoir to fetch scarce […]