How We Lost an Industry and Didn't Notice

The average age of an estate worker today is well above 45, and the sector has no young labour force willing to take up field work When the Regional Plantation Companies took over estate management in the early 1990s, the plantation sector was producing around 180,000 metric tonnes of tea. Last year, that sector produced around 70,000 metric tonnes Sri Lanka has lost more than half its plantation tea output over a period of thirty years, and as a nation, we barely noticed

- By Jivaka Atapattu

For more than a century, Ceylon Tea was not just an export crop, it was the main foreign exchange earner for the country. It was a national inheritance-an agricultural engine left behind by British planters who, whatever one may say of colonial exploitation, built an industrial and managerial system of extraordinary discipline. They did something else rarely acknowledged today: they trained Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) superintendents and estate managers to run those plantations with the same precision and discipline when the British eventually departed. After independence and through the early years of nationalisation, these Sri Lankan planters maintained excellent agricultural standards, meticulous field supervision, and efficient manufacturing. The standards remained high even as costs rose through labor salary hikes, because these managers had been trained by those who knew that the industry's success depended on uncompromising discipline from leaf to auction. Yet today, the same plantation sector that once fed our economy has collapsed to a shadow of its former self. And the most remarkable part is this: Sri Lanka has lost more than half its plantation tea output over a period of thirty years, and as a nation, we barely noticed.

A Decline Hidden in Plain Sight

When the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) took over estate management in the early 1990s, the plantation sector was producing around 180,000 metric tonnes of tea. Last year, that sector produced around 70,000 metric tonnes. That is not a mild decline. It is a structural collapse.

So why is the country not alarmed? Because the fall in production has been masked by the rise of tea smallholders, who expanded their output and kept Sri Lanka's total annual production near the 200,000 metric ton mark. The national figure stayed stable, and the illusion of a functioning plantation sector remained intact.