Power from sugar cane plan for Sevanagala Sugar

Shirajiv Sirimane

NEW VENTURE: Sevanagala Sugar Industries Ltd. (SSIL) will be investing Rs. 1.2 billion to put up an electricity generating plant at the factory.

Chairman and Managing Director, Daya Apparel Export who has purchased 90 per cent of the company, hopes to produce around 2.5 MW of electricity. “This would be generated from using the waste of the sugar cane,” he said.

Since the factory requires only around 1.4 - 1.5 MW, the balance will be fed to the national grid. The company has already finalised the technical report. “This would be a major plus point for the area since most parts of the villages do not have electricity,” he said.

He said that the sugar cane growers too are increasing since they have introduced a home grower system which guarantees farmers a fixed price for sugar cane. “Due to this we can increase the power generation to almost 3 MW,” he said.

The factory has been in operation for 18 years but was neglected before the takeover mainly due to lack of reinvestment.

“When we took over the company in 2002 for Rs. 550 million it was running at a loss. But due to reinvestments and better management we have turn around the company,” he said.

Daya Apparels has invested Rs. one billion since the take over for new machinery that has helped to increase production from 13,000 metric tons per annum before the take over to over 35,000 metric tons per year. The company is also looking at investing on a bio-fertilizer manufacturing plant of at Sevanagala produces over 15,000 metric tons of bio fertiliser per annum and the company imports artificial manure on demand.

At present the Daya Group owns 23 business entities including apparel, aviation, sugar manufacturing, construction, trading, engineering, plastics, transports, hotels, and agro based industries, bio fertiliser and green energy sectors.