Financial Times

Dankotuwa Porcelain saves millions through the process of upgrading
Dankotuwa Porcelain Limited is expecting increased revenue with the introduction of equipment that will allow it to produce new types of porcelain products, together with major savings from its production process with the upgrading of its plant, the company said last week.

DPLs management negotiated the purchase of a new kiln and several glazing machines from a German company that was going out of business, saving DPL approximately 200 million rupees. This Issenmann kiln will replace the 21-year-old kiln in the factory at Dankotuwa, and also increase the plants capacity by 10%.

“With this kiln we will be able to produce some beautiful new products that our designers have been working on,” Kithsiri Wijesundara, CEO of DPL was quoted as saying in the statement. DPL has already saved millions of rupees through several innovations while expanding and upgrading the capacity and capabilities of its kiln and other equipment.

“The new kiln is expected to reduce our energy costs from the present 10.65 rupees per piece to only 5.15 rupees, which would bring huge savings to the company,” said Piyasiri Hettiarachchi, DPL s Engineer. “This fast firing kiln can make a product in only six hours, while the old kiln took 30 hours and a further eight hours for cooling.” The new kiln is also an “open firing” type, which does not require products to be covered by a refractory material known as “sagger” that is required for products fired in the old kiln. DPL thus also saves on the cost of sagger, approximately three million rupees per month.

The acquisition of two Automatic Glazing Machines from the same German company is also expected to enhance the quality of products and save on labour costs, compared to the present manual glazing. The total cost savings in energy, automatic glazing and sagger is expected to be in the region of 58 million rupees per year. DPL has been purchasing new equipment and expanding its production capacities to meet increased orders from the global market. The company purchased another kiln last year at a cost of 68 million rupees, which expanded production capacity by as much as 20 percent.

DPL is in the process of installing a new 800 kilowatt diesel generator manufactured in the UK at a total investment of 24.7 million rupees, for use with the new equipment. DPL already possesses two 840 kilowatt generators, but needed additional power to run the kiln installed last year. “These sophisticated kilns need continuous power, which the national grid cannot reliably provide.”

“The company would sustain a large loss if power failed for more than a minute, hence the need for our own generators. “We have also purchased an automatic changeover system which would further increase reliability of the power system,” said Hettiarachchi. “In addition, we are using the generators during peak times, when power from the national grid is more costly. So we are saving the company some money. However trying to generate our own power using diesel generators can never be low-cost since the efficiencies of these engines and generators are lower than that of large industrial scale generating units.”

Dankotuwa Porcelain, founded in 1984, is a public quoted company listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange, manufacturing and exporting tableware to markets around the globe including the United States, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

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