Basilur Tea

Basilur Tea was founded in 2006 by Dr. Gamini Abeywickrama, a Sri Lankan tea professional who set out to reposition Ceylon tea as an experience rather than a commodity beverage. He partnered with creative director Andrey Mareev to build that positioning around design: Basilur's tins and boxes, illustrated and collectible, are as central to the brand as the tea inside them, a departure from the plain bulk packaging that has historically defined much of Ceylon tea's export trade.

The company runs its production from a six-acre facility in Kelaniya, just outside Colombo, staffed with Grade A tea tasters and its own in-house testing laboratory — the operational backbone behind a brand better known internationally for its packaging than its factory. Basilur has since opened its own retail presence abroad, including standalone shops in Singapore, Poland, and Australia, extending the brand past Sri Lanka's borders rather than relying solely on third-party distributors.

Basilur frames its mission explicitly around reviving what it calls an age-old tea-gifting culture, treating a tin of tea as something bought to be given rather than simply consumed — a specific niche within Ceylon tea exporting that the brand has built almost entirely around design-forward packaging rather than estate names.