At 6.32am on the morning of July 20th, 2023 my father, Dilmah Founder Merrill J. Fernando, passed away at the age of 93. My brother and I lost the father that formed, guided and anchored us through our lives, and humanity lost someone whose vision and lifetime of devotion offer genuine solutions to much of what ails the world today.
Merrill J. Fernando started his remarkable life humbly; unable to afford a university education, he borrowed the equivalent of $50 from my grandfather and left Pallansena, the tiny hamlet in which he was born, for Colombo. His life in tea began when he travelled by ship to London in the 1950s, one among the first Ceylonese (Sri Lankans) to have an opportunity to learn tea tasting. The art of tasting tea and connected sales & marketing were until then the sole preserve of our former colonial authority.
He learned the tea trade, and he discovered something more important: the structure of the industry was formed around extractive, colinial economic principles – simply put, the country that grows tea will never own it. Ceylon (Sri Lanka) shipped tea in bulk. The money was made by traders in London and elsewhere. The growers, the land we farm, the biodiversity that influences taste and goodness in Ceylon Tea, were all inputs.
My father came home with an idea that was – at the time – close to absurd. He believed that tea should be picked, made in the traditional, orthodox method from green leaf to black, oolong, green or white tea, packed and branded in the country where it grows, by the people who grow it. It took him thirty five years to overcome the social, financial and market obstacles to realizing that vision. He was fifty five when the first pack of Dilmah branded tea was first offered for sale.
My father’s legacy is founded in his refusal to accept indifference to the people and nature that make tea. He refused to accept the division of labour, a concept that generations before him assumed was unshakeable. He did so because he could not accept that value should be created in one place and captured in another.
For the grower, he revealed a powerful truth. In a world where colonial authority has been usurped by transnational corporations, Merrill J. Fernando proved that origin must be the brand and not just a source. He fought against commoditisation and demonstrated that less developed countries need not export opportunity, potential and profit, while at the same time importing poverty and inequality. The education, housing, nutrition, poverty alleviation and climate action that are a part of Dilmah Tea – all funded by 15% of our pre-tax profits – fulfill my father’s promise that our family business will serve humanity. That is possible even in troubled times where brands sincere to quality cannot afford the discounts that drive growth, only because we know the value must stay where the leaf grows, for the benefit of the people and nature that infuse heritage, taste, and goodness.
For nature, this is a similarly powerful truth. No business can exist without the ecosystem services that nature provides – clean air, water, and in the case of tea particularly – sunshine, wind, rainfall in right measure. Extracting value from nature without returning it would be parasitic, and so my father taught us to own that commitment. We do so in the work of Dilmah Conservation, funded by that founding philosophy.
For the consumer it is as powerful. When you care for a herb from nursery to harvest, much the same as a father or mother cares for a child, you develop commitment, pride and love. My father loved tea and he was fierce in his defense of pure origin tea, in protecting the purity of Ceylon Tea – even against traders and governments who couldn’t recognise his foresight. Real tea, picked and packed at origin, garden-fresh – great taste, and natural goodness. That also comes with kindness, not for storytelling, but genuine kindness because that was his belief. For my father, quality and ethics were never about marketing; they reflected his integrity.
What this means for the future. This is the part that should force every person to pause, for what we do to people and nature today will shape the world our generations live in – kind, liveable, with adequate food, breathable air and drinkable water – or every moment unimaginably painful for the lack of these. My father did not only leave a story that is the foundation of our business. He left us a solution to the unkindness and volatility we see in our world. Businesses using their profits for stewardship of soils, biodiversity, lives and livelihoods, education, healthcare, climate resilience, strong rural economies and more – commitments written into how the business works, obligations that cannot be retired when they become inconvenient or unprofitable.
He called all this business as a matter of human service. Three years on, the vision is alive and flourishing. It is our prayer and earnest hope that this narrative shall echoe in the impact of businesses around the world as we connect with my father’s powerful – but once absurd – vision, of business serving humanity.
Thank you Thathie, for your invincible faith, for your heart of kindness, your integrity, your relentless determination to make the world a better place through the power of your passion for better tea. God calls many, but few respond. You were one of the few. Rest in peace in the arms of our Lord.
