Founder of Dilmah Tea Leaves a Storied Legacy

Apr 17, 2024

Merrill J. Fernando with sons Malik (left) and Dilhan. Photo courtesy of Dilmah Tea Company.

Merrill J. Fernando, who passed away on July 20 at 93, pioneered the export of value-added tea from Sri Lanka with his Dilmah Tea brand. He was the first marketer of a branded, single country-of-origin tea, helping greater profits accrue to the domestic economy than from shipping tea in bulk.

Fernando insisted on orthodox processing because in his view the crush, tear, and curl (CTC) method created “tea without a soul.” His mission, as he told Harvard Business School in a case study interview in 2015, was to “take fine quality tea to the world.” Today, Dilmah is among the world's top ten tea brands, according to Euromonitor, and Sri Lanka is the top exporter of orthodox leaf.

Fernando was born in 1930 in rural Sri Lanka when the country, then known as Ceylon, was still under British colonial rule. He was schooled in the village of Pallansena among peers whose parents worked in tea. After Sri Lanka won its independence in 1948, tea workers were finally able to advance into trading and management roles that had previously been filled by British nationals.

After gaining the opportunity to work as a trainee tea taster, he become one of the first Sri Lankans to be admitted into the tea trade proper. He showed promise, and in 1956 was sent for advanced training in London on Mincing Street, the auction center and global hub of the tea business.

“I became aware of blending and marketing tea and the exploitation of the image of Ceylon tea in packets of tea, which even then contained little or no Ceylon tea. That knowledge and experience changed my mind. I began to worry about the future of our tea industry,” Fernando said in the interview for the business history archives of Harvard Business School.

“I was quite shocked by the developing culture of mixing tea from various countries with little or no Ceylon tea content and then marketing the blend as Ceylon tea. This was done to exploit consumer perception of Ceylon tea as the world’s finest,” he said.

Fernando worked for long decades championing Ceylon tea, first as a taster, then as a trader and seller of bulk tea. In 1988, he set up Dilmah Tea, a vertical brand that became known worldwide. His youngest son, Dilhan, succeeds him as CEO of the MJF Group of companies managed partly by his brother Malik. MJF includes Forbes & Walker Brokers, The Ceylon Spice Co., and MJF Beverages, which makes tea concentrates.

“The success of Dilmah is that everything from day one was an innovation. I had no track record to follow. I had read no books,” Fernando said.

He describes a “turning point” in 1975 when he acquired packaging equipment and funded a business to make tea tags and carton print cartons. Fernando was already a major bulk supplier of tea to Poland, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand, so he offered to package private-label tea for major retailers. He used the proceeds to acquire several tea gardens in the 1980s. In 1988, Australia's Coles retail chain, with 2,500 outlets, including 845 supermarkets, accepted two of his Dilmah branded teas priced as premium unblended loose leaf “picked, perfected and packed” at origin.

“As a family company, we have come to a level which I never even dreamt about,” he said, “We don’t want to be the biggest brand…but we are the best brand; that’s where we want to remain.”

A Dilmah website paid tribute to Fernando, stating that the “visionary founder’s greatness was in his invincible faith, integrity, and love for tea and family… His achievement in disrupting an exploitative colonial industry irrevocably changed the lives of producers worldwide, introducing a paradigm shift in ethical business before ethics and sustainable business acquired the prominence they have now.”

The website displays hundreds of messages of condolence in many languages from people around the globe.

To contribute a message, visit mjf.dilmahtea.com.