Industries using salt to be registered

Sri Lanka has made it compulsory for all industries which use salt to register with the Director General of Health.

A permit from the Director General of Health, the authority on food, is needed for importing, purchasing, transportation, and storing salt, reports ColomboPage.

Major salt-related industries use salt for iodising, clothing pigmentation, food fermentation and preservation, fertiliser, purification of water of swimming pools, and drying fish and other fisheries industry segments. About 30,000 MT of salt are used for non-consumption related industries.

Industrialists that are engaged in these industries are needed to register before the main food authority of the relevant sector to obtain salt for their industries.

Under Article 26 of the 1980 Food Act, the purchasing, storing and transporting salt is subjected to license and the offenders can be prosecuted in a Magistrate’s Court and penalised.

In 2011 it was estimated that the demand for both household and industrial consumption in Sri Lanka is estimated to be 150,000 Metric Tonnes (MT) per annum. The actual average production was approximately 110,000 MT and the balance demand was met by imports carried out by private parties. It is estimated that in the same year Sri Lanka spent US$ 971 million on salt imports.

Being the most uniformly consumed food additive known to humans, salt is the single most important agent in the fight against the prevalent iodine deficiency disorders in Sri Lanka. In June last year the Government began expansion of salt production with the opening up of the Kinniya saltern but this has been hampered by low prices and quality concerns, according to reports.