Sun shines for former Metal Packaging after takeover

Sunshine Holdings has achieved a remarkable turnaround in its metal packaging business during the last 18 months since its acquisition through DFCC Bank.

Sunshine Packaging Ltd., (SPL), formerly Metal Packaging Limited was a pioneer in the Rs 650 million metal packaging industry. Equipped with customised packaging machinery, SPL offers a wide variety of packaging solutions, supplying the total FMCG industry’s requirements in metal-based packaging. A significant part of its growth has been the supply of tea caddies for export orders for the local tea industry. As with the local industry they deal with clients such as Ahmad Tea, Tetley UK and Rabea, Saudi Arabia.

Sunshine Packaging is a subsidiary of Sunshine Holdings Limited, which is a diversified conglomerate with 15,000 employees and strategic business holdings in branded tea, packaging, plantations, health care and tourism. The group is listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) with revenue of Rs 5.9 Billion for the financial year ending March 2007.

The local metal packaging industry caters to approximately 50% of the total demand while the rest is imported as finished or semi-finished cans from China. This is an untapped opportunity for the Sri Lankan industry and SPL is looking to grasp this opportunity with a series of innovations designed to increase capacity and efficiency at its manufacturing units. “We offer our customers unmatched printing quality because we use the best food lacquers imported from Belgium. By further increasing the range of inks we can provide far superior products than those imported today” says Anandh Vaithylingam, Director – Operations.

SPL is currently in the process of introducing a new method of printing using Ultra Violet technology, a growing printing technique worldwide. Through this new method SPL hopes to reduce a substantial amount of energy consumed. SPL is also in the process of investing in semi-automatic assembly machines for tea cans in order to overcome difficulties in obtaining manpower and increased labour costs. Sunshine packaging is hoping that these measures will help it achieve its goal of 50% market share by 2010.