Rs 700 mn cable car project in N’Eliya

Shirajiv Sirimane and Sara Pathirana

Sri Lanka’s first cable car project would be ready by early December this year. The project will be initiated in Nuwara Eliya.

This historic venture has been under taken by MLM Associates (Pvt) Ltd with an invest of Rs 700 million for the first stage. Executive Director, Milanka Gajanayake, speaking to Daily News Business, said that the cable car network would be installed from Lake Gregory to Single Tree Mountain. The total distance would be nearly 2 km.

“We would be importing three cable cars from Switzerland for this ground breaking project.” He said that they went through several profiles of companies and selected this Swiss company due to its unblemished track record of setting up over 100 such ventures all over the world.

The cable cars would be dual powered; solar and wind and each cabin would have the capacity for 15 persons. “We would also have a glass bottomed cable car with additional luxuries to be used for high end personalities.

Under this project the management is also working on opening a new restaurant on Single Tree Mountain that would go with the new venture.”

Gajanayake said that they would finance this project from overseas borrowings and were confident of earning profits after five years. The price of the likely return cable car ride would be around Rs.1,000. “Over 750,000 visitors travel to Nuwara Eliya each year and we hope to attract 70% of them for rides on the cable car,” he said.

The project is being segmented into three phases that would extend to nearly 7.5 km with the second phase commencing from the Single Tree Mountain to Magastota and the third phase would extend from Magastota to the planned airport at Nuwara Eliya.

The third phase will commence in two years time, after the completion of the first two phases and through progress being monitored.

The investment for the second stage will be Rs. 400 million making the total venture over Rs. 1 billion. Under the second stage, a 20 room luxury hotel will also be built. In addition, a luxury coffee shop and a souvenir outlet and a kids play area will also be set up. “This is a new concept to the country, and will be another tourist attraction, especially with the boom in tourism in Sri Lanka,” Gajanayake added.