Legacy Building: How the three-generation tea business Dilmah breaks rules and turns kindness into currency

The mothers, trapped in generational poverty, initially resisted. Today, those women run their own catering businesses, occasionally too busy to fulfil orders from Fernando’s wife. “It’s the best news,” he says, over a cup of tea.

The foundation’s environmental work follows similar principles. A mangrove restoration programme in eastern Sri Lanka initially faced resistance from locals concerned about land-use restrictions. Where prawn farms contaminated soil with antibiotics and cadmium, Dilmah used sunflowers to remove toxins, then planted mangroves.

The breakthrough came through children, who noticed prawns and fish returning to waters. The programme is now entirely community-run.

“Do you really want to join an extractive enterprise? Probably not. Do you want to join a business that has a human impact, where success is expressed in the lives of others? Yes, absolutely.” Fernando is proud to admit that Amrit, his son, is already part of the business and is currently in brand development while overseeing the cinnamon plantations, and his daughter is slated to join the business full-time upon graduation.

Fernando is outspoken about the economics of his industry. Coffee producers receive less than 2 per cent of the final retail value, he says. Tea is sometimes worse, sometimes marginally better. His father’s objective was to change that.

The company maintains control over its entire supply chain, from cultivation to export. All tea fields remain in Sri Lanka, though the company is exploring partnerships in India to service global hotel contracts. When asked if the company would ever venture into the coffee industry to multiply its impact, Fernando replies: “We believe that whilst our human objective is ambitious, you’ve also got to stick to your core competence.” 

That focus extends to supplier relationships. Through an initiative called Stronger Together, Dilmah works with shipping companies, freight forwarders and packaging suppliers to integrate sustainability into their operations. “But we’re not benevolent in that sense,” Fernando says. “We will not compromise on quality, so what we do is we help them to build their own capability.”

The approach has its limits by design. When a potential American partner proposed opening more than 100 tea lounges several years ago, Fernando declined. The company’s School of Tea, which trains staff and partners, could not scale at that pace without compromising standards.

“You’ve got to make a stand,” he says. “There are as many opportunities that you are going to pass up as that you can embrace.”

But can kindness compete with efficiency in global markets?

Dilmah’s answer lies in their partnerships—relationships spanning 40 years, where distributors are known by first names and children know each other’s children. “We have more friends in business who are partners with us than we have people that we would call a distributor,” he shares, beaming.

Read more: Legacy Building: Commune’s Julian Koh on breathing new life into his family’s furniture manufacturing business

Amidst the technology-driven landscape of business, the company’s production methods remain largely unchanged from traditional techniques discovered 5,000 years ago. Tea leaves are hand-picked—only the top two leaves and bud—because the topology of Sri Lankan estates varies by as much as 300-metres within a single garden. Relying on machine harvesting would collect weeds and wood along with leaves.

After picking, leaves are withered on beds about 20-metres long for 12 to 18 hours. “If you microwave it, you can probably do it in 30 seconds,” Fernando notes, “but by doing that you’re not respectful of nature, and therefore nature is not going to give you all the goodness it intended.”

In a world where luxury typically means exotic leather and gold fixtures, Dilmah is betting on a different definition: connection. Connection to soil, to the workers who tend it, to the biodiversity it supports.

“Imagine tasting sunshine, imagine tasting soils,” Fernando says, describing their Silver Jubilee Luxury Collection. It is not hyperbole. It is the intricate tea-making process, where fermentation timing can make or break a batch if misjudged by two minutes, that genuinely captures terroir.

“Consumers have evolved to a point where they’re much more conscious, much more aware,” he continues. “People say that Gen Z is frivolous. I think they’re quite the opposite.”

Read more: Is bubble tea unhealthy and can boba be subject to cultural appropriation? Experts weigh-in

When asked how Dilmah has embraced technology and AI, Fernando replies: “The old is as good as the new. You need to balance the two. It augments, rather than replaces, tradition and human intelligence. New technologies help us manage our people and assets better.” Drones provide satellite imagery to optimise nitrogen and potassium application. Sensors monitor withering temperatures across beds too large for manual checking.

The company has also adopted biochar, a technology developed by the Aztecs involving pyrolysis of biomass. Buried in root systems, biochar provides 10 to 20 years of nutrients from natural materials whilst retaining moisture.

When asked about legacy, Fernando demurs. “I’m not so arrogant as to say I want a legacy. I steward a legacy that my father crafted.” He describes waking each morning considering how to move closer to the company’s objectives. “This year’s goal is to change 200,000 people’s lives. We are opening new centres in northern Sri Lanka, where conflict recently ended, and setting up a suicide prevention line to address rising mental health crises among young people.”

His son, Amrit, represents the ultimate test of the Chinese proverb: wealth doesn’t last more than three generations. Can values survive prosperity?

Fernando’s response is experiential rather than theoretical. Family members regularly participate in foundation programmes, serving meals to malnourished children in cinnamon-growing regions and working directly with programme beneficiaries. Amrit has been visiting foundation projects since he was three, bouncing along in his father’s 27-year-old Land Cruiser—a vehicle now approaching 800,000 kilometres. 

“You don’t learn this in books,” he says. “It’s experiential. Everything is experiential.”

The proof, he suggests, will come when his son faces his own decisions about whether to pursue higher salaries elsewhere. “If somebody gave him an option of 10 times the salary, I’m very confident that he wouldn’t go,” Fernando says, before turning to Amrit, who’s in the room with him and adding with a smile, “Don’t let me down, son.”

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