Value-driven business and purpose-driven brands place CBL in Top 10 Most Admired Companies

CBL Group Managing Director Sheamalee Wickramasingha accepts the award on behalf of CBL

As one of Sri Lanka’s largest food manufacturing conglomerates, CBL has been a strong advocate for innovative Sri Lankan food products. CBL’s brands Munchee, Ritzbury, Tiara, Revello, Samaposha, Nutriline, Sera and Lankasoy continue to raise the bar for the food industry and, despite a year full of challenges, CBL was named among the Top 10 Most Admired Companies of Sri Lanka for 2020. 

The award is based on performance in the financial year 2019/2020 and conferred by the International Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka (ICCSL) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) together with Daily FT to recognise exemplary organisations who have shown strong financial performance, supported by value created for stakeholders, customers, employees and the society at large. 

This recognition for CBL, comes in the wake of a challenging year wrought by the Easter Attacks at the start and a pandemic lockdown at its close. As a food manufacturer producing a wide range of better-for-you food choices across many food categories, these devastating happenings shook the foundations of Sri Lanka’s food supply chain and revealed glaring discrepancies. CBL’s performance in this challenging year has been nothing short of exceptional and the Group’s 6,000+ workforce has been all-hands-on-deck through it all. 

CBL Chairman Ramya Wickramasingha says that CBL’s resilience is a direct result of its purpose and core values of Caring, Quality, Innovation and Integrity. The Group’s purpose was cemented from its beginnings when the protein enriched Care biscuit in 1968, revealed how food innovations can change lives for the better. As a part of the team at CBL that supported the development of the recipe for Triposha in the 1970’s to address nutrition deficiencies for pregnant and lactating mothers, he says that CBL has been making large strides to positively impact Sri Lanka’s food intake through its products. 

“Every single brand of CBL and every single product that we make has a purpose – Samaposha as a brand, for example, works to build better nutrition habits in the home and every Samaposha product will deliver product specific value. To do this, we support a network of 12,000 farmers who grow the grains, greens etc, to the highest quality standards, which go into our products. Samaposha’s products have the goodness of Sri Lankan greens and grains in a delicious, easy to use form that children also enjoy. This purpose driven approach is the same through all our brands.” 

CBL’s agriculture operations extend beyond the Samaposha brand; a special strain of rice was developed for Munchee’s Kome brand and Munchee has a range of products using local ingredients like Bran, Karapincha, Kothalahimbutu, Kurakkan, Ginger crackers and biscuits, Ritzbury uses locally grown nuts in premium chocolate offerings, Nutriline delivers Sri Lankan grains in an upmarket cereal product, Sera is Sri Lanka’s largest exporter of coconut milk and the Group also has an extensive organic growing and processing operation oriented for export. 

CBL has also contributed to the stability of the supply chain through its work to develop its distributor network. With Sri Lanka’s supply chain reliant on small and medium retail enterprise, developing this extensive network is crucial to food security. Collaborating with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), CBL has developed an intensive competency building programme for over 5,000 distributors and sales personnel in its value chain and aims to motivate 40% of its network to use digital payment methods and double the number of female entrepreneurs in its network. 

CBL’s brands have consistently topped food categories, three of its brands – Munchee, Ritzbury and Samaposha – were big winners at the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards with Munchee bagging “Brand of the Year 2020. Sera and Lankasoy have had tremendous victories in their categories delivering plant-based food products. How does CBL ensure that brands thrive even during difficult times? Wickramasingha says the key has always been the CBL Family. “We know that our success is driven by our teams and so we place emphasis on training development and talent management. When the lockdown was announced, one of the first things that we decided was that we would protect our employees in every way and I’m truly happy to say that despite all the hardships we have not had any layoffs or pay cuts and we have fulfilled every promotion, bonus and increment. Every employee has been fully engaged because they understand the importance of our role as a food manufacturer and it is this individual employee commitment that has resulted in group success.” 

This commitment to people practices has yielded results beyond the business. Three CBL companies applied and were certified as Great Places to Work, with two companies ranking in the Top 40 Best Workplaces in Sri Lanka. 

Sri Lanka’s admiration is not easily won and CBL was evaluated among many listed and unlisted leading corporates. As a Sri Lankan conglomerate, CBL understands the responsibility on its broad shoulders. The company has made significant investments towards solar power generation, process automation and to minimise the environmental impact of its operations. Brand initiatives are geared towards addressing key societal issues such as early school dropouts due to financial hardship, lack of access to education in rural areas, creating awareness on better nutrition practices, diversity and empowerment for communities with disabilities and rural infrastructure development and programmes to improve livelihoods and standards of living for all its consumers.