Serendib Horticulture Technologies to enter EA

Indunil Hewage

Serendib Horticulture Technologies Pvt Ltd will establish itself in East Africa for the production of clean fruit planting material during the forthcoming year. Serendib Horticulture technologies Chairman, Dilip de Silva said that in 2013 the company will be working with a US based company to develop a tissue culture laboratory, which will have a capacity, that is going to be the highest in East Africa.

The laboratory will be focused on producing fruit plants which will be made available to farmers at an affordable price. De Silva also said that they are hoping to service East African countries, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, through this lab. The design, capacity building, development of protocols will all be done by company personnel who will be initially involved in the operation.

Another significant development for next year will be the transfer of production from a lab in China to Serendib Horticulture, said de Silva. This lab which has been supplying plants to Europe for the past 10 years have now decided to contract the production to Serendib. The company has already finalized the agreement to commence production early next year. This should increase the volumes by over 750,000 plants per year, said de Silva.

Serendib Horticulture, who are the consultants to the Ministry of Environment in Qatar has now been requested to look into the management of the Biotech Centre in Qatar. We are now looking into all aspects of the operation before we commit ourselves to this Public-Private Partnership, which certainly shows the technical and managerial superiority of the company. Locally, Serendib Horticulture is working with a local company in developing fruit orchards in Northern peninsula. The company will be providing with the planting material and the know-how to improve the livelihoods of the Northern farmer.

De Silva said that this year the company has distributed fruit plants to Vavuniya and Jaffna where the farmers are getting higher yields from their plantations.

Due to the untiring efforts of the staff, the company was awarded the, Gold Award - Research and Development and the Bronze award - Production of Foliage at the 2012 National Agribusiness Award ceremony. The company was also awarded, Bronze award- Export Business and professional Services and Bronze Award-Agriculture Value Added by the National Chamber of Exporters award at a ceremony held recently at the Hilton Hotel.

These are due to the dedicated service of the staff of the company who has been working tirelessly amidst so many constraints the company had faced during the year.” I am proud of my staff” said de Silva. If the company could perform so well with all the constraints, the company is bound to perform excellently nationally and internationally during the coming year which shows a better growth than this year.