Lanka Salt Limited plans to make Sri Lanka a self sufficient nation in salt by 2020, said its Chairman, Ayyoob Khan.
Speaking at a special event at Lanka Salt he said several new measures have been taken in the last two years to increase production and efficiency. He said that during the last two and half years they introduced new salt fields in their three salterns, in Hambantota, Bundala and Palatupana and also deep tanks have also been established.
Khan said a new plant was established and also age old machinery wwere retired and new machines, vehicles and equipment introduced. The Chairman said that plans were under way to introduce new products such as Vacuum salt to the market in additional to industrial and Lak Lunu brands.
“The new products would be ready by 2019,” he said. Lanka Salt is an ISO certified company and their salterns are spread in a total area of 2,600 acres. The institution has 90% of shares with ETF and 10% with employees who account to over 1,000. The Chairman said that when the new board was appointed in March 2016 they found that in the past years salt has been sold for less than cost. “This has resulted in heavy losses and the new Board decided to increase the prices and also appointed agents all over the country for better distribution. “Today we have a total of 66 agents and the distribution is streamlined,” he said. According to data total consumption of local salt is 150, 000 metric tons including 120,000 for domestic and rest for industrial. “Sri Lanka’s Salt harvest up to 2017 October is expected to be 85,000 MT and by end 2018 we hope to increase this to 11, 000 MT and keep on the momentum and gradually increase to meet Sri Lanka demand for 2020.” Lanka Salt, Vice Chairman, Keerthi Munasinghe said that the total debt of the institution in 2015 was Rs. 33.5 million.
“In the following year we turned it around and paid Rs. 465 million to the government as tax. Lanka Salt earned a profit of Rs. 260 million last year and we also managed to have a fixed deposit of Rs. 500 million.
In addition we also released Rs. 180 million to the ETF and a further Rs. 20 million to our employees,” he said.
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