Malwatte Valley Plantations PLC Director/CEO Shanaka Samaradiwakara has been appointed Chairman of the Planters’ Association of Ceylon, using his inaugural address to set out a five-point plan for reviving the plantation sector.
Kahawatte Plantations PLC Director/CEO Binesh Pananwala was appointed Deputy Chairman at the Association’s 172nd Annual General Meeting on 19 September at the Cinnamon Grand, Hiru News reported. Lanka Business Online carried the same account.
Central Bank Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe attended as Chief Guest and Sri Lanka Tea Board Chairman Raj Obeyesekere as Guest of Honour.
The five points
Samaradiwakara’s plan covers value addition, research and development, land use and productivity, irrigation, and long-term security of tenure.
On value addition, he noted that value-added tea accounted for more than 50% of total tea export volumes in 2025, most of it from Regional Plantation Companies investing in matcha, green tea and artisanal teas. He asked the Tea Board and exporters to protect that segment, pointing out that significant quantities of green and other high-value teas remain unsold at auction while similar products continue to enter the country.
On R&D, he said commercially viable alternatives to several essential crop protection products remain limited, and called on the Tea, Rubber and Coconut Research Institutes to develop them — warning that disease threatening the rubber industry needs immediate attention. “We cannot afford to repeat the experience of the coffee industry, where coffee blight devastated the sector,” he said.
On land use, he said two decades of diversification into oil palm, pepper and avocado are threatened by unsupportive policy, agricultural theft and crop damage by wild animals, costing companies millions of rupees a month in security.
On irrigation, he asked the Government to relax restrictions on groundwater use and simplify tube well approvals. On tenure, he said replanting takes more than a decade to generate revenue, and uncertainty over lease extensions is deterring foreign investment: “security and certainty of tenure are mandatory.”
The Governor’s framing
Dr. Weerasinghe told the meeting the question “is no longer simply how much we produce, but how efficiently we produce, what value we create, and how competitive we will be in global markets 10 or 20 years from now.” He said agricultural exports rose from US$ 2.8 billion in 2024 to US$ 3.1 billion in 2025, called for climate resilience to be treated as an investment issue, and identified plantation tourism as a way to diversify estate incomes.
The sector in numbers
Outgoing Chairman Sunil Poholiyadde said the Association’s 23 RPCs manage about 154,000 hectares. Since 1995 their capital base has grown from Rs. 8 billion to Rs. 108 billion, with about Rs. 290 billion invested in replanting, mechanisation and factories.
He identified labour shortages, rising input costs, climate change and tenure uncertainty as the key challenges, noting only about 88,500 workers remain on estates — 10% of the resident population — and that wage adjustments must be tied to productivity-linked employment models. Estates remain home to more than a million residents.
Context
The plan lands as tea export volumes reached 166 million kg over eight months and total exports passed US$ 12 billion in the same period.
