Tokyo Cement Group recently commissioned operations of the newly expanded
capacity at the Tokyo Cement Colombo Port Terminal in a soft opening ceremony. The
event is the culmination of a 2.5 billion rupees worth investment by the cement giant,
held under the auspices of Mr. S.R. Gnanam, Managing Director and Mr. Christopher
Fernando, Executive Director of Tokyo Cement Co. (Lanka) PLC. This operations
expansion further reiterates the Company’s commitment to boost the local economy as
a truly Sri Lankan organization.
Once fully operational the Tokyo Cement Terminal situated inside the Colombo Port will
be geared to handle a total capacity of 450,000 Metric Tons of Cement per annum.
With the newly commissioned storage, bagging and distribution capacity expansion
project Tokyo Cement provides a fresh assurance of an uninterrupted cement supply
for customers in the Western Province.
The capacity upgrade of the Tokyo Cement Colombo Terminal will come online when
all three new cement storage silos, each with a capacity of 6,000 MT, become fully
operational. This terminal expansion ramps up Tokyo Cement’s total bulk cement
imports operation from 600,000MT p.a. to over 1,000,000MT p.a. to supplement Tokyo
Cement’s local production capacity of over 3,000,000MT p.a. Adding more storage and
local distribution capacity to the bulk cement operation will result in better local value
creation that benefits a vast network of suppliers attached to local packaging,
distribution, and logistics operations as opposed to importing bagged cement as a
finished product.
In line with this expansion, the company doubled bulk cement distribution operations
carried out at the Tokyo Cement Colombo Terminal from 30,000 MT to 60,000 MT
during the month of December. Apart from providing a firm solution to prevent the
cement shortage prevalent in the market currently, this move ensured efficient cement
distribution to reach consumers in every part of the island.
As the country’s largest cement manufacturer, this far-sighted project was initiated as
part of the Company’s readiness plan to cater to the growth in demand in the local
construction industry. In addition, the Company also laid foundations recently for a
factory expansion project that will increase its manufacturing capacity by another 1
million Metric Tons. Through these unified efforts focused on enriching our local
economy through local value addition, Tokyo Cement Group strongly reaffirms the
company’s position as the leading partner in nation-building.
