Piramal Glass Ceylon opens Rs. 25 m effluent treatment plant

Piramal Glass Ceylon Plc (PGC) on Friday inaugurated its new high capacity effluent treatment plant (ETP) set up with an investment of over Rs. 25 million.

P. Kumaran, the Deputy High Commissioner of India in Sri Lanka, and Member of Parliament Vidura Wikramanayake along with Sanjay Tiwari, CEO and Managing Director of Piramal Glass Ceylon Plc in the presence of Ranjith Fernando and Dr. Bandula Perera both Directors of Piramal Glass Ceylon Plc, as well as senior officials of the BOI, CEA, Pradeshiya Sabha, Divisional Secretariat, local religious establishments and other guests were present at the opening.

The ETP plant is one such venture that ensures the preservation of water by recycling, whilst making sure that the water let out to the environment does not harm the environment and the surrounding community.

With the installation of this plant the company will be recycling over 750 cubic meters per day of its process water requirement in the manufacture of its glass bottles.

Inherently PGC’s bottle manufacturing is an environment friendly process. Broken glass (known as ‘cullet’ in the glass industry) is also used as a raw material in the manufacturing process. Piramal Glass Ceylon annually consumes almost 20,000 tons of broken glass collected from all parts of the country at a cost of over Rs. 100 million.

The company collects all types of cullet to help people get rid of this discarded material from their homes and stores them in its premises till recycled. Piramal Glass, as an ‘environment friendly’ company, believes that it is its corporate social responsibility to ensure that all cullet is collected from the community, without merely restricting the collection to only that which is required for their process. This is also a source of income generation for the poorer segments in society.

PGC’s glass bottle manufacturing plant was originally situated at Rathmalan and was relocated in Horana under the patronage of the ‘300 factory programme’ under the Mahinda Chinthana. The company had the privilege of coming under the umbrella of the BOI since signing the agreement in July 2006.

The Pplant was commissioned in December 2007 with an investment of over $40 million. The plant has the capacity to produce 250 tons of glass per day and in terms of bottles over 225 million bottles per year.

PGC is currently fulfilling the entire country’s requirement of glass bottles by selling almost 75% of its capacity in the local market, whilst exporting the balance to niche markets, to the tune of $10 million worth of glass containers annually in different parts of the globe.

PGC supplies bottles as packaging materials to industries such as pharmaceutical, aerated water, food and beverage, liquor, wine, agro chemicals and cosmetics.  It is imperative that high levels of hygiene are maintained in the glass bottle when such products are filled in them.

The company has also been accredited with ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 22000:2005 the food safety management systems. Furthermore, PGC is in the process of implementing the new international standard designed to ensure safe food supply chain worldwide, thus fulfilling the requirements of any organization in the food chain which provides the framework of internationally harmonized requirements for the global approach.

Thus PGC, being a responsible corporate entity, has invested heavily on infrastructure to ensure compliance with the prevailing environmental policies, in line with the group philosophy of ‘care.’