By: Staff Writer
January 28, 2023
A British/Guyanese tea manufacturer sets his eyes on the African continent for the further growth of his tea empire, truly taking it global.
Mark Dalgety, president and chief executive officer of Dalgety Teas, headquartered in the United Kingdom, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that because the African market has over 1.5bn people living on it and because of its wide landscape, the opportunities for a Black Caribbean are endless.
Mr Dalgety, a Guyanese by descent, born in the UK but lived in Guyana in his younger years, said that the tea business has opened up a lot of doors for him around the world. Dalgety teas is not only operational in the UK, but also has offices in the USA and has a farm network, which started in Guyana but has expanded to several other Caribbean, Central American, African and Asian markets as well. “I started my African expansion last year and most of my global expansion drive and where we have now a two pronged situation where we are pushing through in the US, where we have a small warehouse in New Jersey and obviously now we are moving into Africa.”
Ghana presented the most fertile option for Mr Dalgety to set up his Africa offices because the country is one of the more developed African countries but also still has relatively cheap skilled labour. Mr Dalgety also said: “Obviously, in Africa, we could make more and the money could spend more because I mean, with the cost of labour here, some of the things that I could do here, I literally cannot afford to do it in England or America. One of the massive billboards on the high street here in Ghana, it might cost me less than 5,000USD dollars. If I was really England, it would be 20,000GBP pounds, which is nearly 30,000USD.”
The road from the slave ship to the UK, to Guyana and back to Africa has not been as straight forward in the least. Mr Dalgety also said: “I was actually born in the UK, my parents are Guyanese and I was sent to Guyana when I was a one year old, so I basically grew up as a Guyanese right through.
“I went back to London when I was about 19 spent three years working and then I went and studied chemical engineering. Then I decided to head back to Guyana to live and went broke within that time.” Balancing two homes became too taxing for Mr Dalgety and that’s when the opportunity for Dalgety teas presented itself to him. “In Europe about 25 years ago the herbal tea market was growing, but I didn’t understand then that herbal teas was really what we called bush tea in Guyana. It’s basically bush tea in a teabag.”
He also noticed that most of the herbal teas on the European market were made with artificial additives and flavouring, so he decided to marshal his network in Guyana so he can make a proper herbal tea and he has been going strong for the past 25 years since Dalgety teas was first started. “My teas are 100 percent natural, we make them from scratch,” he said.
Dalgety Herbal Teas is a successful producer of high-quality strong tasting teas. The ingredients used to produce Dalgety teas are sourced from small farmers, which creates over 500 jobs.