Pussellawa Plantations' innovative measures pay dividends

Pussellawa Plantations Limited (PPL), a member of the Free Lanka Capital Holdings Group is now reaping the benefits of the ambitious rubber re-planting programme started six years ago. As a result of using new high yielding clones, presently a cumulative production of 3300 tonnes of natural rubber is now being achieved in a productive area covering 2800 hectares.

With the completion of the re-planting programme, the production is estimated to increase up to 5650 tonnes within the next eight years from 3700 ha.

According to a spokesman of the Company, even as it is, PPL yields are the highest in the country among all companies. He said that 44% of the budgeted profits for 2011 will be re-invested on the re-planting drive. Explaining how this was achieved, the spokesman said that PPL was one of the pioneers to use 'rain guards'. "For instance, each tree yields 30g per one tapping normally. Due to rain interference only 190-200 tapping days are possible. With rain guarding this has increased to around 300 days. Rain guarding thus plays an important part," he said.

'Low frequency tapping' whereby the number of workers engaged for tapping rubber trees is reduced has helped to drastically reduce the escalating costs of production. "Highly recommended by the Rubber Research Institute, we use this technology in a positive way and is obtaining encouraging results," the spokesman said. "This method will also be useful to overcome the predicted worker shortage in time to come." Pussellawa Plantations have been innovative and successfully experimented growing rubber in the mid-country tea estates at 3000 feet elevation replacing unsuitable and uneconomical tea, even though rubber planting is normally done up to 1000 feet above sea level covering the low country only. "The mid-country crops giving better yields of around 1799 kgs. per hectare as against 1100 kgs the low country." the spokesman said.

PPL comprise 50% tea and 50% rubber plantations. The company owns 13 rubber estates comprising almost 5000 hectares in Colombo and Ratnapura districts, which amount to 4% of the total extent in Sri Lanka of 128,000 ha.

With the global prices increasing due to the high demand specially from the emerging economies like China and India, a bright future is seen for rubber. Sri Lanka contributes 2.5 percent of the global rubber production and is the only producer of Latex Crepe - the cleanest form of rubber manufactured in the world.