For the first time, Lanka Salt Limited, Hambantota has made a turnover of Rs. 1.4 billion for the first quarter ending March 31.
Chairman Lanka Salt, Chaminda Sooriyapatabendhi told ‘Daily News Business’ that this is an all time record for the company.
“The final accounts are not yet tabulated but we expect a profit of around Rs. 500 million plus for the quarter which too is the highest achieved in the history of the company. We have also paid around Rs. 175 million as taxes.”
The new Chairman also said they also paid a bonus to employees recently and made some casual workers permanent. He also disclosed that in 2019 the company was making huge losses and had financial liabilities to banks, suppliers to the tune of around Rs. 324 million.
“However in recent times the company has seen a positive rebound and today we also have savings of over Rs. 1.6 billion in our kitty. For the first time Lanka Salt also hopes to export industrial salt to Canada to clean motorways during winter and through a foreign agent we will also look at penetrating other European markets.”
Currently Lanka Salt provides over 90% of local industrial salt and also produces fertilizer which accounts for over 80% market share in the local salt industry. The new CEO of Lanka Salt, Dr. Ajith Shanmuganathan said that one of the key factors towards this achievement was new management tools that were introduced to cut down on waste and increase efficiency.”
This resulted in production increasing from around 60,000 Mt tons per year in 2020 to around 110 million Mt Tons tons last year. He said that while good weather conditions also helped them to increase production from all their slaterns they also found new direct markets by entering tier products to supermarket chains like Keells, Cargills and Sathosa.
Director Lanka Salt, Dinuka Chamara De Silva said that they invested around Rs. 450 million to build and install a Pure Vacuum Dried Salt Producing Plant at Palatupana slatern last year and new products are already being marketed.
He said that this product will also be of great value to local food and medical sector manufacturers as they used to import this product before imports were banned. “This has given them a huge Forex saving.”
He said that they will also engage in PVD exports especially to Korea and Japan as there is a huge demand for this PVD salt.
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