Sri Lanka’s Kelani Cables to expand product portfolio while investing in more sectors
Kelani Cables PLC in Sri Lanka is reportedly looking at aggressively expanding the company’s product portfolio while also investing in both related and unrelated sectors in business.
This includes forming joint ventures, finding new export markets and even buying into firms related to cable manufacturing, Mahinda Saranapala, Director/CEO Kelani Cables PLC has been quoted as saying the Business Times.
For starters the company, which has added to its bottom-line over the years through time-tested management practices of Kaizen, an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap major improvements, is looking at forming a joint venture on technical know-how with a foreign firm to manufacture transformers in Sri Lanka for exports.
“We are the number one enamel winding wire (EW) manufacturer in Sri Lanka. With a joint venture with a foreign firm, we want to manufacture transformers for exports,” Saranapala has explained.
According to the media report, the company also has plans to manufacture water pumps. “The annual water pump requirement in Sri Lanka is 25,000 pumps. We can see an opportunity in this sector,” Saranapala has said noting that the idea is to move away from traditional businesses and implement out of the box thinking.
Kelani Cables’ exports’ volumes have also considerably arisen over the past few years and the company currently exports to nine countries with Myanmar and Pakistan being added recently.
Saranapala has noted that Myanmar has an annual GDP growth forecast of 8.5 per cent and a population of over 65 million. “There is a huge potential in this market and we have just started in Pakistan which also looks promising,” he has said.
The annual world cable market is growing at nine per cent and Saranapala has noted the unprecedented potential in exports.
Kelani Cables is also set to acquire three units of machines for aerial cable bundling. “This is an expansion area we are looking at,” Saranapala has added.
In support of the core business of cables, the company had started trading related items and as a result, in addition to the turnover from cables, the trading items related to electrical industry added considerably to its bottom line. “We gradually built this sector up. Now it is adding real value to the bottom-line. For an example Kelani Cables is the number one in terms of volume generation in insulating tape,” Saranapala has added.
In addition to this, Saranapala has said the company, which celebrated half a century last year, is also interested in industry-related start-ups.
Kelani Cables was awarded the World Class Award (highest) in the large manufacturing category at the Global Performance Excellence Awards (GPEA) 2017 at Okada Manila, Philippines.
Asia Pacific Quality Organisation organises the Global Performance Excellence Awards every year to recognise the best performing business organisations in the Asia and Pacific Rim region. Kelani Cables was the only electric cable manufacturer to win at GPEA 2017, Saranapala has said.
OSL take:
The expansion programme of Sri Lanka’s Kelani Cables is indicative of the strength and growth of the country’s private sector. The ease of doing business environment in the country as well as the business conducive economic policies have helped boost the country’s business sector. Also, Sri Lanka’s geographical positioning in the Indian Ocean and the many trade agreements as well as trade concessions enjoyed by the country have helped boost the island’s business sector. Foreign businesses could therefore confidently explore business/investment opportunities in Sri Lanka and also look at forming partnerships/joint ventures with local companies.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/17022020/Z_7 |