Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company PLC, trading as Dilmah, is a Sri Lankan beverage company that is headquartered in Peliyagoda, Western Province, Sri Lanka. While MJF Teas is the parent company of Dilmah, MJF Holdings is the ultimate parent. The company is best known for its brand of Ceylon tea, sold internationally. The company was founded in 1985 by Merrill J Fernando. As of 2023 Dilmah is the 10th largest tea brand in the world.
History
The company's founder, Merrill J. Fernando, was born in 1930 in Negombo in British Ceylon.[2] He moved to Colombo, where he became one of the Ceylonese tea tasters, after doing his training at Mincing Lane in London. While there, he was astonished to see that different teas were mixed and blended but still marketed as pure Ceylon tea. The tea which had been hand-picked and produced according to the Ceylonese traditional process was being used only as a raw material. It was bought cheaply, with branding and packaging taking place in Europe and the UK. This system meant that the tea producers received only tiny amounts of the total profit, with middlemen (wholesalers and resellers, mainly a few large corporations) receiving the greatest share of the profit.