Golden Sunrise for garbage

Minister Amunugama meets venture investors to produce fertiliser and power from waste

Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama, held discussions with the management of Golden Sunrise Company, Greenlink Enterprises Inc. and Global Environmental Technologies Inc. and confirmed the support of the government for the all important and timely project to produce fertiliser and power from waste.

Golden Sun-Rise Chairman Gamini Karunadhara, Greenlink Enterprises Inc. President Mike Fernando, Canada’s exclusive representative of GET and coordinator of the project Jo Mihalj, Global Environmental Technologies Inc, Canada President Joseph Mihalj (Jr), Construction Consultant Veljko Matic, Technician/ Engineer handling wastewater, discussed their project with the Minister.

Domestic Waste Expert Prof. Haschemi, Vladimir Banfic and Prof. Vice Soljan, form the experts GET team.

Global Environmental Technologies, Inc. and Golden Sunrise (Private) Limited, a BOI enterprise will invest Euro € 30 million on this project, which will contribute considerably towards improving the environment in Sri Lanka. The Company will collect waste material initially and use it for the production of organic fertiliser, and at a latter stage this will be used for power generation.

Golden Sunrise Chairman Karunadhara said that his company would be using advanced German technology in this waste transformation project. The company plans to process 500 tonnes of garbage to make 100 tonnes of organic fertiliser per day. In the second phase, the process will be used for electric power generation and initially they will produce 9.8 Megawatts of electricity. The contribution of Golden Sunrise to the National Grid has been approved by the CEB.

Due to the pressing problem of garbage, which is a repercussion of urbanisation, the Ministry and the BOI have taken steps to encourage investments by companies engaged in sanitation and environmental projects. A series of meetings were held at the Ministry that deliberated on these problems, which resulted in some companies obtaining approval to initiate investment. Action was also taken to address the issue of garbage produced at the BOI Zones, notably at Katunayake and Biyagama.

Garbage has become a problem in many urban areas, and Minister Amunugama has indeed taken steps to address this problem in the BOI’s own zones, where industrial production has resulted in an increased need for waste management.