For more than three decades, Tess Agro has steadily moved up Sri Lanka’s industrial value chain. What began in 1992 as the country’s first cold-chain operator has evolved into a diversified business spanning seafood exports, industrial packaging, and logistics infrastructure. Its next ambition is aluminium beverage can manufacturing, a sector the company believes is poised for long-term structural growth.
Headquartered in Kelaniya, Tess Agro today operates across tin can manufacturing, warehousing, and integrated industrial infrastructure. The company was previously engaged in the processing and export of yellowfin tuna, swordfish, and reef fish to international markets, while its European presence, established through a branch in Zeebrugge, Belgium in 2012, provided direct access to buyers across the continent.
Under the leadership of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dilshan Fernando, the company has increasingly focused on strengthening its manufacturing footprint. Its latest strategic push centres on packaging, an area Fernando sees as critical to building a more resilient and diversified industrial business.
Tess Agro started as a cold chain operator, moved into seafood exports, and now manufactures tin cans. How much of that was by design?
It’s genuinely a mix of both. The strategic thread running through everything is that we’ve always stayed close to food, perishables, and supply chains; we never chased unrelated sectors. But the specific moves were also shaped by circumstance. When we started our operations, we never set out with a rigid blueprint to become a tin can manufacturer. Each stage of the business created the foundation for the next.
The move into seafood processing and exports in the mid-2000s reflected an effort to capture greater value from operations that had until then focused largely on logistics and cold-chain handling. The expansion into Europe followed naturally, driven by a desire to reduce reliance on intermediaries and maintain closer relationships with buyers.
However, the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019, followed shortly by the Covid-19 pandemic, created significant disruption across the export sector. In response, the company temporarily scaled back its seafood export operations while shifting its focus towards manufacturing and domestic industrial expansion until market conditions became more favourable.
More recently, Tess Agro entered industrial packaging through Agro Tin Tech, its tin can manufacturing venture launched in 2023. The facility produces A1 stackable food-grade coated cans for both domestic and export markets. The rationale behind the move was not simply diversification, but balance.
Seafood exports remain attractive, but they are inherently exposed to currency volatility, commodity pricing, and logistics disruptions. Packaging manufacturing provides a more stable revenue stream and strengthens the industrial side of the business.
Alongside the manufacturing facility, the company is also working towards establishing an integrated can-filling and contract-packing centre for seafood and other varieties of canned food products — part of a broader strategy to deepen value addition across the supply chain.
Are you investing most in seafood, tin cans, or warehousing, and what’s informing your priorities?
The company now sees packaging as its clearest long-term growth platform. Beyond conventional tin cans, Tess Agro is evaluating expansion into specialty packaging solutions for private labelling, and consumer-branded canned food products. These segments are where margins tend to be structurally stronger than contract manufacturing alone.
The packaging side is where we see the most runway right now. Seafood exports can be volatile because you’re exposed to foreign exchange cycles, commodity price swings, and logistics shocks. Tin can manufacturing gives us a more stable domestic revenue base and reduces our dependence on any single sector. Warehousing and leased facilities are part of our operations, but they’re not the growth frontier.
Beyond the current businesses, we’re looking at a few directions: consumer-branded canned foods, where margins are stronger than contract manufacturing; expanding the packaging offering to specialty cans, and broader food packaging solutions; and potentially integrated food manufacturing such as frozen foods, canned goods, ready-to-eat products that would draw on our existing cold chain and processing infrastructure.
In terms of competition, are you more focused on other Sri Lankan exporters or players across the wider region?
Competition is becoming increasingly regional.
While Sri Lankan seafood exporters remain relevant benchmarks, the packaging business places Tess Agro within a broader Asian manufacturing landscape.
But I don’t wish to overstate competitive positioning at this early stage.
We prefer to let execution define our position over time.
Given the renewed economic uncertainty, how is demand for Sri Lankan products among your European buyers?
Despite renewed economic uncertainty globally, the domestic market has become an increasingly important focus for the company in the near term. Europe’s relatively high labour costs, combined with Tess Agro’s direct presence in Belgium, continue to provide strategic advantages amid shifting trade conditions and heightened buyer caution.
When markets become uncertain, proximity matters more. Being close to customers and maintaining direct relationships becomes a significant advantage.
How has your vision for Tess Agro evolved over your career, and what’s next on your agenda?
When you look back, the vision was never a fixed destination. It evolved as the business did. What stayed constant was a belief in vertical integration and in building real manufacturing and logistics capability rather than staying a pure service provider. Each layer we added, including processing, exports, and packaging, made the overall business more resilient.
What’s on the agenda now is aluminium can manufacturing for the beverage industry. We see growing long-term demand there, and the current market capacity dynamics present a real opening to establish a presence and scale it over time. The Belgium presence is also a signal of broader ambition. Sri Lanka is the base, but the platform we’re building isn’t limited to it.