A Sri Lankan exporter that began with one collection.

Basilur is a Sri Lankan brand of Ceylon tea made largely for export. It belongs to Basilur Tea Export (Pvt) Ltd, which was founded by Dr Gamini Abeywickrama, its chairman. The Colombo business daily Daily FT dated the company to 2007 in a March 2022 profile, and the company says its first collection, Leaf of Ceylon, was launched in 2008. A 2021 announcement carried by Ada Derana Biz English described Abeywickrama as having “decades of experience in producing and exporting the finest quality Ceylon tea.”

The company’s head office is at Angoda, in Colombo District, according to its website. In May 2026 Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror reported that Basilur’s teas are manufactured at a tea estate at Baddegama, in the island’s south, and that the range runs to more than 600 items. The company itself says every blend “is carefully crafted at our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Ceylon.”

The founder’s family is in the management. The same Daily Mirror report named Thushari Abeywickrama as managing director, with Rajitha Abeywickrama as finance director and Charaka Abeywickrama as marketing director.

Tea books, tins and an island.

Basilur sells itself on packaging as much as on tea. “We don’t sell tea; we intend to offer a unique experience to our consumers,” Abeywickrama told the Daily FT in 2022, and the paper credited the look to a partnership with an international creative director. On the company’s website the chairman names him as “Mr. Andrey,” whose expertise “has been a great strength in shaping the brand’s identity”; the 2021 announcement in Ada Derana Biz English gives his full name as Andrey Mareev.

The collections are built around shapes. After Leaf of Ceylon, which the company says brought Sri Lanka’s regional teas together in one range, came the Tea Book in 2009, a caddy made in the shape of a book, and the Oriental Collection in 2010, which the company describes as having “intricate designs” and credits with raising “the art of gifting and collecting tea.” Its Island of Tea range comes in a tin shaped like the island of Sri Lanka. The online shop sorts its teas by packaging as well as by flavour, under headings such as “luxury tin caddies,” “signature tea books” and “crafted cartons.”

The range has since widened well beyond black tea. The website groups its teas by type — black, green, oolong and white teas, herbal and fruit infusions and cold brew — and by collection, including Four Seasons, Bouquet, Black Essence and a Gin Tea line, alongside teaware. The company sums up its approach in four phrases, among them “Luxury in Every Detail,” which it glosses as “iconic designs ensuring a unique premium appeal.”

The company lists many awards on its website. The one we could confirm in the press comes from the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing: at its Brand Excellence awards for 2021, Basilur and its sister herbal brand Tipson won two titles, the Daily FT and The Island reported in February 2022; the company lists Basilur’s as gold for Export Brand of the Year. Its own list adds earlier SLIM export-brand awards from 2010, a 2015 gold for the Tea Book at the WorldFood exhibition in Poland, innovation selections at SIAL trade fairs and Great Taste awards from Britain’s Guild of Fine Food for individual teas from 2020.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all sell tea, and their names were founded in five countries: Lipton and Brooke Bond in Britain, Tata Tea and Wagh Bakri in India, Ito En in Japan, Basilur in Sri Lanka, and Salada in Canada. Where a tea brand was founded is only the start of its story, because a name can travel a long way from the city where it began, and the country on its founding record need not be the country where its owner sits today.

A tea brand’s identity is usually carried less by a field than by a blend, a packet and the cup it promises, because the leaf inside may have been grown far from the place where the name on the front was made. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, where its leaves are bought, and where its tea is actually blended and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its tea comes from and where it is packed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A tea brand built for gifting.

Basilur’s main market is abroad. The chairman describes the aim as making Basilur “a global leader in premium tea gifting, competing with the finest international brands,” and the Daily Mirror reported in 2026 that the company supplies international hotel chains, lounges and retailers. At home its presence is smaller: in September 2022 the Daily Mirror reported the opening of a Basilur outlet at Bandaranaike International Airport, and in July 2021 the company agreed with Hemas Pharmaceuticals to distribute Tipson herbal teas in Sri Lanka, Ada Derana Biz English and The Island reported.

The Tipson range named in that announcement includes organic turmeric, ashwagandha, moringa and tulsi infusions, which were to be sold in leading supermarkets and at outlets in Colombo’s Liberty Plaza and Colombo City Centre. Behind the scenes, the Daily Mirror reported in October 2020 that Basilur Tea had moved its operations onto Infor CSI business software, implemented by the Sri Lankan firm Kingslake.

In May 2026, for International Tea Day, the company marked 202 years since tea plants first arrived in Sri Lanka by planting 202 tea plants on its Baddegama estate, the Daily Mirror reported. Two of its best-known ranges, Leaf of Ceylon and Island of Tea, name the island directly.

A note on addresses: the company’s shop is at basilurtea.com; the shorter basilur.com was a parked domain offered for sale when we checked in October 2026.

For a design guide, Basilur shows how a tea brand can make the container part of the product, with tins and boxes the company presents as gifts and collectibles. Compare Dilmah, another Sri Lankan Ceylon tea brand, and Kusmi Tea, known for its coloured tins. For this guide we use a deep teal, an antique gold and a cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Basilur’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.