SWITCH-Asia Food & Beverages Project: Success stories unveiled

Thursday, 1 March 2012 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

SWITCH-Asia Food & Beverages Project of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce held a mini symposium on ‘Sustainable Consumption & Production’ recently.

The event was attended by a large number of the project’s stakeholders in the food and beverages industry ranging from plantations to dairy processing companies and representatives from the European Union, the project’s funding agency and also personnel from the Ministries of Environment, Finance and Industry and Commerce.

Speaking at the event, Project Director of SWITCH-Asia Programme S.M. Sathiacama stated that the project which was commenced in 2009 helps small and medium enterprises make their production process efficient by conserving energy and translate these savings to profits.

Prema Cooray, CEO of CCC Solutions, the implementing agency of the project, highlighted the importance of food and beverage producers as well as all other manufacturers to be environmentally friendly and adopt practices that conserve energy and resources.

Cooray mentioned that unless organisations adopt sustainable practices the consumers will refuse to buy products thus forcing manufacturers to follow sustainable and eco friendly practices.

He also pointed out that as businessmen; adopting sustainable measures also have a business aspect to it helping organisations to maximise profits. According to Cooray, efficiency of the production process will result in a rise of profits.

Wim Prud’homme, Minister Counsellor, Head of Finance and Contracts of the European Union, highlighted the relationship between the European Union and Sri Lanka and its presence in the country for a long period of time and about its grants extended to Sri Lanka to rebuild after the conflict.

A number of stakeholders of the SWITCH-Asia Food & Beverages Project presented their successful case studies and shared their experiences and knowledge, thus inspiring more and more organisations to learn and adopt their conservation success stories.

The entities that shared their success stories were: Convenience Food (Lanka) PLC, Dunagaha Coconut Producers Co-operatives Society, Foreconns Canneries Pvt. Ltd., Glenugie Tea Processing Centre – Maskeliya Plantation PLC, Laxapana Tea Processing Centre – Maskeliya Plantation PLC, Maxies and Company Pvt. Ltd., Panilkanda Tea Factory – New Saman Group Pvt. Ltd. and Richlife Dairies Pvt. Ltd.