Die and Mould industry gets $1.5 m infused with 10 year special plan

As the demand by Lankan manufacturers for the mother industry of all industries surged, Sri Lanka’s leading die and mould facility has also reported $ 47 K revenue. “The Die and Mould Facilitation and Development Centre (DMFDC) facilitated by my Ministry is not profit oriented but focused on research and development but still showed Rs. 6.3 million ($ 47,637) revenue in its short period of operations due to growing demand from the target manufacturers. Die and mould industry is the mother industry of our manufacturing. The DMFDC’s strong performance is also a sign of our good industrial health,” said Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen.

Minister Bathiudeen said this after the 30 August review of his 21 June visit to DMFDC located within the University of Moratuwa. The $1.51 million (Rs. 200 million) DMFDC is a successful Private Public Partnership (PPP) collaboration – the funding stakeholders being Minister Bathiudeen’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce (funding $ 1.1 million, nearly Rs. 150 million), the University of Moratuwa (funding $ 264,662, or Rs. 35 million) and Die and Mould Makers Association (funding $ 113412, or Rs. 15 million). In its short period of operations since November 2010, DMFDC reported Rs. 6.3 million ($47,637) revenue by providing its die and mould services to local industries. However, the bigger gains from the DMFDC are its savings for local manufacturers since the local industries now do not need to go abroad for the same DMFDC services which otherwise cost heavily if sourced from abroad. More than 100 Lankan industry personnel have also been trained by the DMFDC in industrial high-tech such as robotics, which if not provided by DMFDC, should again be sourced from overseas (38 persons trained on CNC Part Programming and 69 persons trained on Parametric 3D Modelling).    

“Well supported by the ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ vision, we will also facilitate the implementation of 10 year development plan for this sector identified in 2006 by the Mould and Die Makers Association together with my Ministry and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Moratuwa. This model is more than a mere PPP success since it is implemented not only with the 35 private sector members of Mould and Die Makers Association, but even the University academia and their research and development,” Minister Bathiudeen added.

Apart from training facilities, the Centre’s research and development efforts are fuelled by powerful CNC technology used in robotics such as the CNC Machining Center (4-Axis), CNC Lathe, CNC Electric Discharge Machine, tool and Cutter Grinding Machine, CNC Wire Cut EDM Machine, CNC CMM Machine. Among the industrial grade software and IT used are MoldFlow, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, SolidCAM, Simulation, ANSYS, and AutoCAD.