Dilmah


Dilmah is a Sri Lankan brand of tea, sold internationally. The company was founded in 1988 by Merrill J Fernando. The name Dilmah was chosen by combining the first names of Fernando's sons Dilhan and Malik. It is available in over 100 countries, including Estonia, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Lithuania, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Canada, Chile, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and New Zealand. In 2009 it was considered that Dilmah was the sixth-largest tea brand in the world.

History

The Company's founder, Merril Fernando, was born in 1930 in the village of Pallansena, near Negombo. He moved to Colombo, where he became one of the Ceylonese tea tasters, training at Mincing Lane, London.
In 1974 Fernando bought his first few tea estates to try his hand at producing Sri Lankan tea, and in 1981 he founded Ceylon Tea Services Limited.
In 1985, Merril Fernando convinced the Australian supermarket retailer Coles to stock his brand of tea, Dilmah. He spoke to a Coles buyer about stocking his tea and eventually won him over. In 1988 a Melbourne Coles store started stocking Dilmah on its shelves. It eventually spread to 35 other Coles stores in Victoria and then Woolworths started selling the product as well. Dilmah later exported the tea to New Zealand, where it is currently the top-selling brand, and also to Europe and North America. Today Australia makes up 10 percent of Dilmah's global annual retail sales. In September 2009 Ceylon Tea Services, Dilmah's parent company, earned US$5.2 million on US$19.7 million in revenue, which was up from profits of US$1.3 million, on US$18.6 million in revenue the year before.