Divulapitiya – the home of ‘Magic’ ice cream

DIVULAPITIYA -Put together a passion for what is truly ‘Sri Lankan’ and the creativity of gastronomic experts; blend it with wholesome milk extracted from home-grown dairy cows and then fuse it with a routine of intense hygiene bordering on an obsession – the result? Cargills Magic Ice Cream one of only three ice creams in Sri Lanka that can boast of being made of genuine milk under the highest hygienic conditions- so much so that this journalist was put through a rigorous hygiene routine of ridding herself of all metallic items, having a bath, squeezing into a disposable NASA spacesuit look alike, re-washing her hands from a knee-operated sink and finally dipping her hands in a mysterious sterile portion prior to stepping into the home of Magic.

Making ‘Magic’
The Cargills Magic factory cocooned in the luxury of rural remoteness in Divulapitiya, several kilometres north of Colombo, is equipped with state of the art infrastructure and boasts of 55 ice cream recipes. As I wobbled into the ‘ultra clean area’ in my ‘space suit’ Deva Weerasuriya who heads the Magic Factory under Cargills Quality Dairies pointed out that the hygiene standards practised at the plant go beyond Sri Lankan standards. The manufacturing process is completely automated from the very moment raw materials are loaded into the mixing machines.

The mixing room consists of a series of tanks connected by tubes. Every single aspect from activating the various machines to transferring the contents along the tubes and even cleaning of the tubes between different mixes is computerised. And literally at the touch of a button, the mix is prepared and stored in what is known as an 'ageing' tank.

Inside the airtight ultra-clean production room, the mixture is pumped via tubes into a special freezer that cools and entraps a precise amount of air into the ice cream. This is then pumped into one of the four lines meant for bulk, stick, cone and cup-based ice cream. The space suit clad elf looking workers watch the production line with eagle eyes to detect production flaws. Towards the bulk line, a belt carries the home use boxes in and out of two slots in the wall. This is where the secret of a good ice cream lies. A fully prepared ice cream has to be hardened as quickly as possible so that the texture is of a high quality and is creamy. The belt carries the prepared ice cream into a 'hardening tunnel' and comes out 45 minutes later frozen at minus 35 degrees centigrade.

The speed of processing is beyond comprehension with this high capacity plant able to produces as much as 3,200 litres of ice cream per hour. From Mango Magic complete with juicy bits of ‘real’ mango to Christmas Magic a festive blend of Vanilla ice cream and Christmas cake, the entire Magical assortment is made out of milk collected from dairies in and around Divulapitiya. “We collect over 18,000 litres of milk on a daily basis from around 600 suppliers,” said Weerasuriya.

Back in 1995 when the factory first started operations under Unilever with an investment of Rs. 1200 million ice cream was produced with coconut oil under the ‘Walls’ brand. But sliding profits coupled with labour unrest saw ‘Walls’ closing shop and Cargills taking over an year after, in 2002. Weerasuriya who has been managing the factory since its first ice cream told The Sunday Times FT “With the Cargills takeover we decided to give Sri Lankans ‘real’ ice cream made of ‘real’ cows’ milk. So we shifted from a coconut oil base to a milk based recipe and within a year we made a big turn around in the industry”.

Local
Ranjit Page, Managing Director of the Cargills group, is the wizard behind this magic. “We wanted Sri Lankans who have been stuck with this conventional range of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours to taste something genuinely ‘ours’ and that’s how the ice cream revolution started,” Page said. Four years later Cargills has made a ‘magical’ turn around in the factory and the business. A plant that originally churned out just 1.2 million litres of ice cream a year now produces as much as 9.5 million litres of ice cream, pushing beyond the built- in full capacity of 7.5 million litres. Meanwhile Cargills also boasts being a trailblazer in the field of frozen desserts becoming the first ice cream manufacturer to introduce real fruit in their products and also being bold enough to incorporate the essence of Sri Lankan food in ice cream. From Dates with Honey to, Bibikkan to the taste of Faluda as only Sri Lankans know it Magic has been fast tracking its pace of flavour development to keep the consumer excitement alive.

According to Weerasuriya the Magic team is constantly working on new flavours and once the brain storming is over a new flavour comes out within a month. Weerasuriya said the enchanting range of flavour coupled with quality and affordability has been the cornerstone of the Magic success. “We try to make sure that every single ingredient in our ice cream is locally made from the butter to the cadju nuts we try to source everything locally”, added Weerasuriya.

(The Sunday Times FT was recently taken on a media familiarization tour of the Magic ice cream facility by Cargills).