Elephant House sponsors Institute of Chemistry’s 42nd annual session
Saturday, 13 July 2013 00:01
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Elephant House ice cream, the market leader in Sri Lanka, joined hands with the Institute of Chemistry Ceylon in their 42nd annual session held on 19 June 2013. The session focused predominantly on the role of chemistry in sustainable agriculture.
The theme for this year’s session ran parallel with the Elephant House ‘Vanilla Story,’ which began a decade back when Elephant House approached the local vanilla farmers in the central region. At the time growing vanilla was fraught with risk and the farmers were losing hope of fair trade for their crop.
This was an era where most companies were importing vanilla or using artificial essence in their production. Elephant House ventured out to uplift the lives of the farmers while adding value to their ice creams by using natural ingredients purchased from the Vanilla Farmers’ Association. Thereafter Elephant House continued to help the local vanilla farmers develop this into a substantial business.
Each and every vanilla bean which is used to manufacture Elephant House ice creams is purchased from Sri Lankan vanilla farmers, both as a tribute to them and as a means of supporting the development of the economy. Elephant House started this initiative in 2002 which developed a small cottage industry into a fully-fledged successful agricultural business that at present provides a livelihood for over 2,500 farming families. The produce is exclusively sold to Elephant House at a competitive price. Furthermore Elephant House is the only ice cream brand in the country that uses home grown natural vanilla extract which is extracted in a state of the art essence extracting facility in Ranala. Elephant House has been dominating the Sri Lankan ice cream market for the last six decades, commanding a strong 60% market share. Currently they have 35 take home products and 30 stick variants in their portfolio with plans to expand further not only in Sri Lanka but to export markets as well.
The Guest of Honour at the event Neil Samarasinghe expressed his views: “Despite the cost hike and other operational issues we are focussed on this project’s broader picture. We always strive to give something back to the community,” said Samarasinghe, who has played a key role in this exercise from its inception.
