Financial Times

Drinking tea from a tea-scented table
By Quintus Perera
How would you like to drink your cup of tea served on a table made out of tea itself with the pleasant smell and aroma emanating from both the liquid and the table?

Plans have been finalised for the production of these tables with a sizeable export market expected. This discovery was made by Dr. Gamini Ranasinghe, Managing Director of the Katubedde Malindu Group of Companies in Moratuwa. The man who ventured to solve Moratuwa’s eternal problem of saw dust or rather wood waste disposal (See Page 10 of The Sunday Times FT on May 1, 2005) has been recycling several tons of wood waste collected from various carpentry workshops in Moratuwa and transforming them into laminated chipboard to make furniture.

The same technology and the machinery that was used to turn out wood waste into chipboard is being used to turn out the world’s first ever ‘tea-chipboard’. However in addition to tea waste there is an addition of ancient mixture of local ingredients to the usual binding agents as the normal binding agents have not responded in making tea-wood.

Ranasinghe collects the tea-waste, which is actually the sweepings from tea factories, and transports them in lorries to his factory at Moratuwa. These factory tea-waste sweepings have created a huge environmental problem, worst than the saw dust issue.

There are many problems. On several occasions some tea blenders were caught in the act of mixing the tea-waste with better varieties of tea which hurt the country’s export markets. The other difficulty when disposing tea-waste is finding special locations. If all this tea-waste could be recycled, then not only would this perennial problem be solved but it would help generate a lot of foreign exchange for the country.

At the Moratuwa factory, the tea-waste is fed to the machine in the same way as the wood waste but in the process of making the ‘tea-waste chipboard,’ the composition of chemical mixture would completely differ. The tea-waste is fed into a complex giant machine and the waste matter goes through a certain standard process, within minutes the ‘tea-chipboard’ flows continuously cut into the required sizes. Ranasinghe expects to use these tea-chipboards to turn out tea chests so that the tea could be packed in these boxes.

He said, “Using tea waste sweepings to manufacture tea chests is one of the most novel concepts ever found in the tea industry and it would bring in multiple advantages to the tea industry, to the environment in avoiding pollution as well as would contribute to stop felling a lot of trees that goes into making wooden tea chests.”

He said that another advantage in exporting the country’s finest tea in ‘tea-chipboard’ chests would help to further preserve the aroma and the smell.
“We also turn out tables using these tea- waste chipboards and expect to export these tables which would promote our tea further. When the tea is served on the tables with the aroma and smell coming from the table, it would definitely attract more people to drink tea off these tables,” he said adding that, “Europeans would love to drink their tea seated around a table made out of tea itself.”

The factory is now recycling around 15 metric tons of wood waste per day enabling it to produce 200 boards per day and the capacity is there to produce 500 boards per day. Ranasinghe said, “Our products have a ready, reliable market”

With his entrepreneurial juices now flowing, the Moratuwa furniture wizard is also using Bagasse, a sugar cane residue, a valuable by product that can be converted into energy and several other alternate uses, for chipboard manufacture; using the same technique as in wood waste and tea-waste.

Bagasse is collected from the Monaragala area and transported to Moratuwa. The factory can process 10 to 15 tons per day alternately and produce around 400 chipboards. More than 100 tons of Bagasse could be collected per day. Ranasinghe said, “If I could obtain patent rights for tea-waste chipboards and Bagasse chipboards I could install machinery to take in the entire quantities of Bagasse and tea-waste and utilize them to go for mass chipboard production.”
In addition to all these novel ventures, Ranasinghe is a genius to the very word, as he economizes the production cost drastically by also manufacturing some of the sophisticated machinery that is required to turn out his products. The cost of manufacturing these machines would be very much less than if they are imported.To import a machine to sandpaper the chipboards would cost more than Rs 5 million but turning out one here has cost him less than Rs 2.5 million. Another machine to laminate the chipboards is manufactured at a cost of only around Rs 320,000 whereas if it is imported it would cost around Rs 3 million.

Ranasinghe bought a “Membrane Press” machine from the United States at a cost of Rs 36 million but is now making two similar models here, each costing around Rs 5 million only. Commenting on the machines that were manufactured here, he said, “My machines perform better and more efficiently since they are adjusted to suit local conditions”.The Production and the performance of the machines are carefully monitored by the Plant Engineer, Shanker Ekanayake.
He told the Sunday Times FT that the biggest problem encountered in turning out this type of products is the persistent dust in the production process that affects the environment and can harm workers. “To overcome all these problems we are adhering to the highest environmental norms. All the dust generated in production is collected by giant suckers installed in the factory,” he said.

Ranasinghe also spoke of the creative talents of other staff like D A Jayapala for example who helps to manufacture the machinery and has a knack of turning out an exact replica of a foreign machine.

National asset but unhappy
Though the Malindu owner has ventured into a virtual national service of converting various kinds of waste matter into productive use, is unhappy with the lack of support shown towards his efforts by various concerned authorities.

He said that instead of support, they impede his progress. Ranasinghe has met three government ministers in the hope of getting their cooperation in obtaining various clearances to run his manufacturing concerns smoothly but the efforts have been unsuccessful. The chipboard factory is situated next to the Industrial Development Board (IDB) premises.

When the Moratuwa Municipal Council advertised calling for solutions for the city’s perennial problem of wood-waste, Ranasinghe came forward to help the council. Now Ranasinghe uses the IDB land for his factory on the assurance he would get the land on long lease. But now there are attempts to evict him from this land. He said that this attitude clearly fits into the Sinhala adage “Karana Honda Passen Elawanawa” and said that if things come to worst he would contemplate suing the council.

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