By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

Walter’s Bay, the North American arm of the sprawling Bogawantalawa tea plantations of Sri Lanka bagged the covetous first place in the most watched event of the largest Tea show- the best commercially brewed black iced tea contest at the World Tea Expo held at the Las Vegas Hilton, that closed yesterday. The Expo was held at the hotel in the capital city of Las Vegas in Nevada.

This singular victory by the world’s largest tea exporter, Sri Lanka opened new doors for the island nation to supply quality Ceylon premium teas to 80 per cent of the six billion dollar US tea market , occupied by the iced tea category.

Majority of US tea drinkers, a rapidly growing tea market in the world, following the new findings by numerous scientists that tea is a beverage containing health-giving anti-oxidants, consume their teas in the form of iced-tea.

Total sales of all types of tea-conventional and specialty teas- reached US $ 5.1 billions in 2003. Sage Group International forecasts that that it would surpass US $ 10 billion in 2010.

A jubilant and youthful CEO of the Austin, Texas based Walter’s Bay, Sanje Widyaratna told this correspondent, at the Las Vegas Hilton , where the three day World Tea Expo attended by all tea producing nations and leading tea traders of the world, that Bogawantalawa , one of the largest tea gardens of the world was able to design an ideal flavor profile for the commercial iced tea market of the United States within two and one half years.

A conspicuous absentee at the at the World Tea Expo was the main official promoter of Ceylon Tea, the Sri Lanka Tea Board against whom many traders said the official body was paying only scant attention to the rapidly growing US and Canadian markets. There is no Tea Commissioner looking after the interests of the region.

Gamini Premasiri , the acting Consul General at Los Angeles represented the Sri Lanka government during the first day of the trade show. But the Tea Boards of India and various countries in Africa like Kenya played an active role running their own booths and promoting their respective brands of teas during the expo.

Traditional tea traders like George Steuart ( a booth run by Mahindra Ratwatte and Graham Stork) , Jafferjee Brothers( a booth run by Muffadal Jafferjee) , Gokal Tea ( a booth run by Chrisantha Fernando) were of course there catering to their clients and attempting to find new clients in addition to Bogawantalawa’s Walter’s Bay, which had a booth run by nearly dozen hands. Companies like Boise Idaho based Serendib Enterprises and Fife, Washington based Teaosophy who ran booths were also dealing in Ceylon teas too. Despite the government board’s alleged lethargy the merchants had high hopes for their future.

Walter’s Bay CEO Sanje Widyaratne very eloquently told the judges of the iced tea competition that their brand of black tea for iced tea was a quality tea hand plucked and unblended 100 per cent certified pure Ceylon tea. Calling it had a premium packaging that avoided paper bags that adversely affected the flavour, and the current packaging material was made out of a special kind of polypropelene material that filtered the tea retaining all its original flavours without changing it.

Calling the kind by their company which is being currently sold to large scale US food suppliers, restaurant chains and wholesalers a complete iced tea package that has become a trail blazer for the iced tea industry in the United States , Sanje Widyaratne said, to produce the package Walter’s Bay partnered with several brewing machine companies and "Cirqua" one of the largest water companies of the USA that provided a water filtering system that retained the flavor-quality of the premium tea used for the purpose.

He said the company had to invest heavily to supply these packages, for instance to large chains of restaurants (like Olive Gardens) since before any tea being sold one package would cost one thousand dollars and one chain would take few hundred machines. "I believe," Widyaratne said, ‘Even with the heavy financial investment there will be a tremendous boost to Ceylon teas that will be entering the premium iced tea market in the USA."

He said the warehousing, trucking and distributing these packages of iced tea are partnered with major food distribution chains and are easily distributed to the restaurant chains. " The supply chain logistics, " he said "have been ironed out with many companies smoothly."

Angelo Wickramasooriya, Vice President Marketing of Walter’s Bay Bogawantalawa , who was there at Las Vegas Hilton said the company made that kind of heavy investment in the iced tea project due to the faith they had in Ceylon tea, although it was the hardest challenge they faced. He added Bogawantalawa could accommodate any large volume requirement by the US market to support this massive program. He said Walters Bay Bogawantalawa is aligning itself with this kind of iced tea project even globally to take it as a platform for premium quality teas of Sri Lanka