Sustainable Transformation Podcast: Dilmah Episode

by Sustainability Tracker 12/08/2026

Podcast

This article was contributed by Sustainability Tracker.

Want to know what’s inside Dilmah’s family rule: success vs significance?

“The most selfless person I have ever met in business.”

That’s how Kiarne describes Dilhan C. Fernando, Chairman and CEO of Dilmah Tea, after sitting down with him for this episode.

Dilhan runs one of the world’s best-known tea brands in the world, and by his own admission, he could triple Dilmah’s profits tomorrow. Kiarne sits down with him to find out what it actually costs to run a business on purity of origin, ethical growing and a founding promise never to compromise.

Dilhan walks through the value model his father built the company on: social impact first, environmental restoration second, and profit deliberately at the end. They talk about agroforestry that drops yields, twelve years of biochar trials and why they have a single-origin promise. Dilhan teaches us about the family’s charitable foundation and conservation arm, the bats now helping grow tea and why three of his children have chosen to join the business too.

You’ll hear and learn:

Why Dilhan compares a bag of Dilmah tea to a bottle of wine, and what that says about why they don’t blend tea across regions
How bat research at Dilmah’s Genesis Centre is helping them grow tea
The three-part value model behind Dilmah’s business, and where profit actually lands on that list
What twelve years of testing one unusual soil technique revealed about growing tea through drought

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand what genuine, structural sustainability actually costs, and why one family has chosen it for three generations running.

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