Piramal Glass wins National Biz Excellence award for second year

Piramal Glass Ceylon PLC (PGC) was acknowledged yet again for its exceptional business performances with the receipt of the prestigious National Business Excellence Award presented by the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka.

At the award ceremony held on 30 November PGC was declared the winner in the Manufacturing - Chemical and Ceramic Sector for the second consecutive year.

The National Business Excellence Awards have come to be recognised by the Sri Lankan business community as a highly prestigious “business benchmark” as the selection procedure involves evaluation of performances from a number of different aspects in order to maintain high standards.

The selection criteria goes well beyond the financial stability of the company and takes into consideration areas such as steady growth, balance business portfolio, growth of value addition, performance against the industry, global market reach, excellence in product and process innovation, acquisition of high impact knowledge through direct investments, creating capacity for future growth through capital investment, adopting best business practices for performance management and successful institutionalisation of corporate social responsibility.

The applicants for these awards were evaluated by an eminent panel of judges over the last few months, followed by an in-depth interview.

According to PGC’s CEO/Managing Director, Sanjay Tiwari, the organisation has during the past few years taken several initiatives to ensure that international standards and quality levels are being maintained in their products and processes.

“The initiatives taken by PGC to introduce a continuous improvement program [Manufacturing Excellence] suitable to the requirements of the industry in order to improve their processes and services and thereby be on par with any international manufacturer is already paying rich dividends. This was further strengthened by the success of the Employee engagement program that was implemented”. In addition, Piramal Glass Ceylon was also accredited with ISO 22000:2005 certifications during the early part of this year.

Piramal Glass Ceylon (Formerly Ceylon Glass Company) is the only glass bottle manufacturing plant in Sri Lanka. Located in Horana, it has been in existence for over 50 years.

The company which was originally at Rathmalana was relocated at Horana in 2007 as a BOI venture under the auspices of the “300 factory programme of Mahinda Chintana”.  Thereafter an Investment of US $40 million was made to put up a state of the art glass plant of 250 ton capacity, with five bottle production machines and two colour fore-hearth facilities. “PGC has the capability to offer glass containers in different shapes and colours for multiple industries such as Food, Liquor, Pharmaceutical, Agro chemical and Soft drinks”, said Tiwari.

Since the investment the company has seen a continuous growth in its turnover and the profitability. The company recorded a turnover of Rs. 4.2 billion and PAT of Rs. 578.67 million during the year ended 31 March. It has also recorded a Turnover of Rs. 2384.7 million and a PAT of Rs. 387.3 million during the six months ended 30 September 2011, thus showing an increase of 26% in turnover and 82.6% in PAT as compared to the similar period previous year.

Piramal Glass Ceylon successfully entered the export market by increasing its sales tonnage from 1,200 tons to 26,000 tons within a period of three years. Presently PGC exports approximately 200 containers of Glass each month and earns over $10 million dollars through its annual exports.

During the last three years Piramal Glass has established strong relationships with many reputed international organisations such as United Sprits, United Brewery, Diageo, Bacardi, Pernod Ricard, Oxenham wines, Coca Cola, Amcor etc. who are leaders in the global liquor and wine industry. The company has successfully launched and supplied bottles in more than ten different colours to multiple customers in India, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, Malta, Philippines, UAE, Uganda, Kenya and the Maldives.  

Piramal is a classic example of a local manufacturer who has ensured that the total local glass requirement is met by its own in house production facilities in an era in which most of the country’s commodities are traded from overseas.  

“Piramal Glass Ceylon has a simple yet steadfast objective of fully serving the domestic market whilst increasing the business in the specialised liquor and beverage segment in the international markets thus realising its vision of being the most preferred Speciality Glass Packaging solutions provider in Asia by meeting customer expectation through innovative designs and manufacturing,” said Tiwari