Dankotuwa to acquire international porcelain brand
Lanka Century Investments LCI (formerly ERI), the holding company of tableware manufacturer, Dankotuwa Porcelain PLC plans to acquire an old established European porcelain brand, LCI’s Deputy Chairman, Eric Wikramanayake said.
“We’re trying to grow DPL beyond Sri Lanka and make it a holding company. We’re identifying some distressed porcelain companies in Europe which want to sell out and acquire one of them,” he told the Business Times, elaborating LCI’s plans to restructure its companies.
The plan, he said, is to have manufacturing assets in Asia and establish DPL as a base. “Then we want to own assets in India, South East Asia and go into the Middle East,” he said, adding that the latter is now one of their largest markets. He said that DPL doesn’t want to be a cheap porcelain manufacturer which (most European) manufacturers try to manipulate, but they want to build a lasting brand. He added that LCI has started the process identifying a brand to acquire and will close a deal by mid this year.
He also said that DPL acquired a 76 per cent in Royal Fernwood Porcelain Ltd (RFPL) last December for Rs. 300 million because they needed scale to go international. “We aspire to change from being a low margin contract manufacturer of porcelain tableware to an internationally-renowned porcelain tableware brand.” He stressed that DPL’s future will be focused on harnessing the significant growth in spending power of the rising middle class consumers in these emerging markets.
Mr. Wikramanayake said CLI wants to align DPL to Asian markets. Interestingly, he added that DPL makes four times (the money) selling to an Indian tourist against selling to a Macey’s (European) customer.