The Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) will promote untapped markets in Europe to increase local exports by 10 percent targeted on yearly basis, the Daily News reported Friday.

The SLTB has already launched a major promotional and trade fair campaign in newly joined EU states covering Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, the SLTB Director General H.D. Hemaratne was quoted as saying.

If these promotional campaigns constantly promote these new markets we could increase tea exports by 10 percent on an yearly basis, he said.

He said that Poland's SLTB branch is in charge of the promotional activities in those untapped European markets, which have shown tremendous response from those countries.

These promotional campaigns will be targeted at virgin markets in Europe through promotions, he said, stressing they mainly encourage promoting of value-added tea for these markets, which has an excellent demand.

Moreover, SLTB will participate for major forums including tea testing forum in Germany which has organized by major tea buyers in Europe and International Standard Organization's Tea sector sub committee meeting.

Sri Lanka, which exports more than 292 million kg out of which one third of them are exported by way of value added products, has a big tea market in the European countries in the world.

Source: Xinhua