We couldn’t live in Sri Lanka without visiting a tea factory, and in the Damro Labookellie tea factory on our way home from Nuwara Eliya we had the perfect opportunity.  I had visited back in 2007 when it was owned by Mackwoods but despite being with the same specialist, old but perfectly functioning equipment it was lovely to have Rennie, Misa and Emilka to share the experience with.  

The factory was closed to visitors but our driver found someone to talk with and clearly persuaded them to show us round because not two minutes later, we were on a private tour.  Photos were welcomed, including as you can see of the production process.  I took the third image below to show the vibration of the large metal plate on the right, its purpose being to ensure that only leaf goes to the next processing stage.

English Breakfast Tea is typically BOP, this being Broken (carefully crushed and cut to let the flavour out), Orange (the colour of the brew), Pekoe (the Chinese name of the variety of plant).  In tea bags its is typically BOPF, the F meaning Fannings; these are the small pieces of tea left over after the higher grades have been sold, but high quality fannings can still cost more than lower quality tea itself.  The cheapest fannings are called dust and will end up in the cheaper mass produced teabags.  To their credit, the children passed with ease a test I gave them later – which included these facts amongst others – so they had clearly being paying attention!

At the end of the tour we enjoyed the cuppas that you see in the penultimate image below, and at Misa’s inspiration he and Emi had a go at being sales staff in the shop – for the camera, at least as there was nobody else to sell to!  

A Canon guy since 1978 and my manually operated AT-1 with which I learned so much and still cherish, I got to shoot Nikon when a local couple asked me to take their photo with the Damro sign in the background.

Steve