Elephant House ice cream strengthens bond with vanilla farmers
The ‘vanilla story’ begins a decade back when Elephant House ice
cream approached the local vanilla farmers in the central region, who at
that time were losing hope of fair trade for their crop. Elephant House
ventured into a partnership to uplift the life of the farmers while
adding value to their ice creams, using natural ingredients purchased
from the Vanilla Growers Association.
Each and every vanilla bean used to manufacture Elephant House ice
creams is purchased from the Kandy Vanilla Growers Association as a
tribute to them and method of supporting the development of the economy.
Elephant House has been dominating the Sri Lankan ice cream market
for the last six decades, commanding a strong 60% market share. The
secret to their success lies in the wholesome goodness driven through
natural ingredients in their ice creams. Their uncompromising efforts in
using natural ingredients is one of their strongest propositions which
continue to derive success.
In commemoration of the tenth anniversary of this bond, Elephant
House ice creams took pride in partaking at the Annual General Meeting
of the Association held recently in Kandy with the aim of showing
gratitude to the hardworking Sri Lankan farmer. By awarding scholarships
to the children of the farmers who have excelled in the grade 5
scholarship and the G.C.E Ordinary Level exams, Elephant House ice cream
has helped ease the financial burden of the families. The President of
the Keells Consumer Foods Group, Jit Gunaratne was the Chief Guest at
the event, accompanied by Neil Samarasinghe- Vice President Frozen
Confectionary, Rohana Witanachchi- Head of Supply Chain, Ms Surani
Sahabandu, Head of Sales and Marketing and Ivan Dassanayake, Essence
Manager, Elephant House.
Elephant House ice cream’s relationship with the Vanilla Growers
Association, started in 2002 with the development of a small cottage
industry that transformed into a fully-fledged successful agricultural
business that provides livelihood for over 2,500 farmer communities.The
produce is exclusively sold to Elephant House who offers a competitive
price for the purchase.
Expressing his views, Madugalle, President of the Kandy Vanilla
Growers Association, strongly pledged his unchanged patronage to the
brand and company and made a strong request to all farmer communities to
pledge their support to this brand that sustains their livelihood.
Elephant House is the only ice cream brand in the country which uses
home grown natural Vanilla extracts in their ice cream, manufactured in
their state of the art essence extracting facility in Ranala. The
uncompromising effort in using natural ingredientsis what gives the
brand’s iconic taste and flavor that is loved by all Sri Lankan’s alike
and is the preferred choice among many international giants off shore as
well. |