Out of all the agricultural exports out of Sri Lanka the most famous and indeed the most profitable is Tea. Today Ceylon Tea is synonymous with the highest quality tea and exported to almost every corner of the world, holding the crown as the world’s largest exporter of tea. All this is thanks to the enterprising British planters who introduced tea and established mass production of it. The two men most responsible for this transformation are James Taylor and Sir Thomas Lipton.

Before the 1860s, coffee was the main export crop in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately the coffee plantations were struck by a fungus epidemic, which wiped out the industry. Only then did the planters decided to try out a new crop and turned their attention to growing tea.

It was in 1852 that James Taylor came to Sri Lanka to work for one of the large coffee growers. He was in put charge of an estate name Loolecondera, that was being cleared for coffee. The work was hard and Taylor did most of it himself - clearing the land, building roads, digging holes for the coffee bushes, and nurturing the crop. Keen to develop other crops to grow alongside coffee, he was put in charge of cultivating cinchona - the tree whose bark is used to produce quinine.

In 1866 the company decided to try it’s hand at growing tea and part of the Loolecondera Estate was set aside for it. Taylor was sent India to study the methods of growing and processing tea. Using the knowledge he picked up in India Taylor began to experiment with different methods of processing tea.

In 1869 the coffee blight struck the coffee plantations and wiped out the whole industry in a few years. So the planters were forced to shift their attention to another crop. At first they targeted Cinchona cultivation but soon over flooded the market, which led to it being unprofitable. However Taylor’s bungalow factory was now becoming famous for it’s tea and the other growers also began to move into growing tea. With his expertise, Taylor was they one they all turned to for advice. The first shipments of Ceylon tea had reached the London auctions in 1875, and one million packets of it were sold at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

During the 1870s and 80s saw the rapid expansion of the Ceylon Tea industry and brought a good deal of interest from large British companies. They eventually took over many of the smaller estates.

Another name famous when it comes to Ceylon teas is that of Thomas Lipton. A millionaire in 1890, Lipton was on his way to Australia, when he broke his journey in Ceylon. He had an interest in tea as a product to sell in his shops. Lipton did not trust middlemen, and wanted to explore the possibilities of growing tea and bringing it direct to Britain. He couldn't have picked a better time. Since the problems of the coffee blight, plantations in the island were going for a song. He bought four and could now fully control his company's tea's quality and price. Tea was quite expensive in Britain at that time, and was selling at a higher price than most working-class families could easily afford. Lipton's plan was to reduce its cost by cutting out the numerous middlemen, and render it affordable for the average British shopper. His other novel idea was to begin packaging it. Instead of selling it loose from the chest, as was the custom at that time, Lipton packed his tea in brightly-colored, eye-catching packets bearing the slogan "Straight from the tea gardens to the tea pot."

What James Taylor started as an experiment back in 1866 has now become the major export earning agricultural crop in Sri Lanka and made Sri Lanka a household name all over the world.