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Weerodara Stationery (Pvt.) Limited, a 100% Sri Lankan owned company has been awarded the prestigious SLS standard certification. This is the first Sri Lankan company to receive this certification in the stationery industry.

The company started operations in 1948 at Saunders Place, Pettah when a trader Dhanapala Ranaweera opened a trading house. He was involved in buying and selling and in 1965 bought a Printing press and started manufacturing writing pads. They were the first company in Sri Lanka to introduce games such as Snakes and Ladders and Ludo to Sri Lanka mainly targeting the young teenagers.

According to Rohitha Ranaweera the Managing Director of the Company this market which catered to teenagers caught up and his father then diversified to manufacture other stationery items investing the profits he was earning.

In 1978 Rohitha was appointed a director of the Weerodara and he made it a limited liability company. Rohitha's younger brother Rohan was then absorbed into the company and soon the duo introduced new technology.

Since then the company had a steady demand for their schools stationery and business grew at a good pace. In the early 1980s the two brothers attended a series of international exhibitions in the United Kingdom and Germany. "These exhibitions gave us a good exposure of the world printing industry and we borrowed a lot of ideas from these exhibitions and also bought modern machinery to adjust to the present day times and the increasing demand."

The Director said that even with the modern machinery they still cannot meet the demand specially in the field of school exercise books. "Even though there are small times manufacturing exercise books our demand keeps increasing as our finish and quality is unmatched."

He said that 99% of their raw material is imported as they cannot find quality paper and raw material in Sri Lanka. "With the introduction of VAT our taxes have gone up and now we pay nearly 40% as tax."

He said this was why they are not into the export market though there are several trade inquiries from countries such as Bangladesh and Maldives. Commenting on their SLS certification he said that it was very difficult to achieve it. "It was hard work and I think this award is a small gift for our hard work for the past 50 years."

He said that their next aim is to obtain the ISO certification. SS

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