Rajnesh Ramanathan, Assistant Manager and resident tea expert talks about his career at JKH

After completing my master’s degree in Australia, I joined John Keells PLC as an Assistant Manager. In my current role as a Tea Consultant and a Tea Taster, my job entails both strategic planning and client management. A quintessential day in my role includes planning tea auctions, communicating with plantation management teams and advising clients on organizational shortcomings while providing fallback plans to mitigate any possible negative impact.?

My key responsibilities include leading the plans to obtain the highest tea price at the Colombo tea auction. I develop recommendations for plantation companies and tea factories through data interpretation and analysis. Working for the tea industry, I not only grade and taste tea but also present clear, logical and action-oriented recommendations and plans for John Keells PLC. Different skills such as tasting and grading tea combined with quantitative and qualitative analysis for clients to identify and assess strategic plans to obtain higher prices at the tea auction have been of immense help in my current job role.?

Of my job functions, one that really keeps me engaged is Tea Tasting. Tea Tasting itself is a very sophisticated form of art, that one must master through years of practice to develop the necessary skills. The sense of smell and sight are as essential in tasting tea, as is the sense of taste. First, the appearance of the dry leaf of the tea is examined. The leaf appearance is an indicator of how well the tea is manufactured. Then the uniformity between the leaves, amount of ‘tips’ and leaf style is checked. The taster will then visually examine the infused leaves. A bright infusion is a sign of good manufacture. To get the full taste of the tea, you need to slurp it as you would slurp wine in a wine tasting. Once you have slurped the tea, roll it over your tongue in a swishing motion. The goal is to spray a fine mist of tea over the entire palate, even the back of the throat.?

Working for John Keells PLC, I also received exposure to interact with the top management of client organizations while providing advisory services to the Senior Management regarding the development of company objectives. The most interesting project that I was involved in was the automation of tea auctions. For almost 100 years, the tea auction was held as an outcry system. However, this was later automated and digitalized into an online auction system, which was transparent to all the stakeholders in the tea industry. Implementation of the online auction system saved a lot of time and helped reduce the cost of procurement for tea exporters. The online auction system helped many stakeholders in the tea industry to analyze and interpret clear data, which was not possible in the old auction system.