Sri Lanka’s Elpitiya Plantations puts in place structured sustainability strategy in with UNSDGs
Elpitiya Plantations in Sri Lanka, which is managed by the blue-chip conglomerate Aitken Spence Group, has reportedly put in place a structured sustainability strategy, directly in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs).
The move is expected the company withstand possibly the most complex and far reaching challenge facing the modern world – climate change.
According to local media reports, the company’s natural assets encompass 13 estates spread across the high, mid and low elevations, extending over 8,800 hectare. While the company’s core business is cultivation and manufacturing of tea, rubber, oil palm, coconut and cinnamon, it has diversified into sustainable forestry development, eco-tourism, hydro power generation and specialty-tea manufacturing, to improve financial sustainability by spreading the financial risk across multiple economic sectors.
The company’s move towards doubling down on sustainability has come in the wake of strong improvements in Year-on-Year bottom-line growth, culminating last year in the highest profits on record for EPP since 1997.
Meanwhile, Elpitiya Plantations Chief Executive, Bathiya Bulumulla has been quoted in the local media as saying that what has been most impressive about the company is not only the magnitude of its profits, but its ambitious vision to set a global benchmark for holistic sustainability, focused into three main areas: Leadership and Culture, Philosophy and Purpose and Economic Value Creation.
“We took a strategic decision to re-evaluate the feasibility of our business model,” Bulumulla has said.
“Even then, we had grown to understand that the same incremental approach to problem solving in the plantation sector was fast approaching its limits. As a result, we began to map out a strategy that would lead to Elpitiya Plantations taking a leadership role in sustainability – not just locally, but also globally. Profitability would of course be essential, but we also had to ensure that proactive investments could also be channeled into the betterment of communities in and around our estates, while paying equal attention to the enhancement of our environmental standards. We believe the best way to drive action along these lines is to set ambitious goals and that is the reason we decided to make a firm commitment to becoming the World’s undisputed leader in sustainable plantations by 2025,” he has added.
OSL take:
Sri Lanka’s plantation industry is being revamped to promote further growth in the sector. The government of Sri Lanka has introduced many incentives to the plantation sector to boost the industry. This has created many business/investment opportunities in Sri Lanka’s plantation sector.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/20191107/Z_8 |