Stalwart of the local tea industry and founder and former CEO of Asia’s largest and most global tea brand, Dilmah, Merrill J. Fernando, passed away yesterday.
Initially in 1954, Merrill J Fernando worked as a tea assistant with Arthur Frederick Jones and his sons Dennis and Alan Jones of AF Jones & Co Ltd.
He was considered as a person who led the tea industry in Sri Lanka to a new path by introducing single origin tea to compete with commodity tea. He was 93 at the time of his demise.