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| Tuesday, 30 March 2004 |
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Finnpack breaks into Japanese supermarkets with polythene bags by Shirajiv Sirimane Finnpack, a Sri Lankan polythene bag manufacturing company has broken into the Japanese supermarkets with their polythene bags. This is the first Sri Lankan Company to enter the Japanese packing industry market. According to the Managing Director Finnpack, Pradeep Loganathan the Japanese supermarket chain, FamilyMark marketing with over 15,000 outlets in Japan had made an order for US 3,000 million dollars. The officials, quality controllers and audits had visited their factory in Wattala on three occasions before finalising this contract. The first batch is expected to be shipped next month. He said that the Japanese are very conscious about quality and this was the reason they had not wanted to purchase their requirements from overseas. However with the rising cost of labour the company decided to look for overseas suppliers. "We have been exporting to UK, Europe and USA and this was one main reason for the Japanese company to select us. Our monthly turnover from this market is around Rs. 15 million," he said. The Japanese market is very quality conscious and operates on trust. With this shipment Finnpack is expecting more Japanese contracts. A major advantage in the Japanese market is the low freight charges. This is because most of the containers that bring goods to Sri Lanka return almost empty. Exporting items from Sri Lanka is cheaper than shipping goods from China though China is geographically close to Japan. The main supplier of polythene bags to Japan is Thailand. Finnpack was set up with an initial investment of Rs. 200 million and nearly 200 are employed in the factory. The raw material is being imported mainly from Malaysia, Taiwan and the Middle East. The factory operates 24 hours a day and the interruption to the power supply is a major concern for their business. The main raw material petroleum by-product is heated and made into polythene bags. Whenever there is a breakdown of power the heating process stops and we have to manually throw away the raw material. This costs the company around Rs. 10,000 each time. The breakdown of power has now become a daily occurrence and all our complaints to the authorities have been in vain. Biodegradable bags are also manufactured. Their product range includes adhesive tapes, T-shirt type shopping bags, punched out handle bags, co-extruded films garbage bags and bin liners sheets and liners in roll form. |
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