Sustainability Challenges and the Way Forward in the Tea Industry: The Case of Sri Lanka

In the global food and beverage market, tea as a natural drink represents the non-alcoholic beverages segment. The tea industry in the tea-growing developing countries such as Sri Lanka plays a crucial role in earning foreign exchange, providing employment opportunities for women, and acting as a custodian of the sensitive ecosystems. Despite the economic, environmental, and social significance, the tea industry in Sri Lanka (that produces world-famous Ceylon tea) has faced many challenges from various fronts. However, these challenges and the responses of the tea industry have not been systematically explored. Therefore, this chapter explores the sustainability challenges under economic, environmental, and social dimensions while discussing the strategies adopted by the Ceylon tea industry. It then presents how the tea plantation companies in Sri Lanka have adopted various measures to address them, including cost-saving initiatives, climate-smart agricultural practices, mechanisation of operations, new product development, community engagement and development, and conservation of biodiversity. While some of these measures have shown positive impacts, many of the Ceylon tea industry’s sustainability challenges, such as the effects of climate change, declining land productivity, increase in production cost, low-value addition of tea, social issues, and unequal profit distribution along the global value chain still remain partially solved. The Ceylon tea industry needs to focus on resolving these issues through multi-stakeholder engagement, innovations, and better marketing and value-added product development.