Raigam salt with PVD technology

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

Raigam Wayamba Salterns under the Raigam Group will commence the operating of the first ever Pure Vacuum Dried (PVD) salt plant in the country shortly.

“We worked hard to introduce PVD technology to Sri Lanka as this is unique to the country and the plant will be the first to operate under this technology. With a long capacity development process this high energy consumption technology was introduced to the country, Raigam Group Chairman Dr. Ravi Liyanage told Daily News Business.

Sri Lanka will be one of the first Asian countries to use this technology and it is not even available in India at present. The technology will revolutionalize the salt industry in Sri Lanka, he said. In developing the technology to suit the local salt industry where it could be operated using firewood has made is comparatively a low cost mechanism. PVD salt is mainly used in two lucrative industries of high tech food manufacturing and hotels.

Local food industry requires 1,200 to 1,800 metric tons of salt per annum to be used as a flavour booster. The booming tourism industry also requires substantial amount of salt on daily basis. Raigam Wayamba Salterns, the pioneer in introducing value added salt, free flow salt manufacturing to the country continues its revolutionary journey in the salt industry in Sri Lanka by commencing the commercial production of its plant which is established at Palavi in Puttalam.

Specialty of the PVD process is that the embedded vacuum evaporation technology ensures salt is 100 percent free from any impurities and quality is consistent irrespective of any condition of the raw salt.

The input salt is fed in a form of a dissolved slug which is put to different high-tech processes such as milling, centrifuging, evaporating and drying under extreme temperature conditions where final output is very much pure as the name spells out.