Keells Super uplifts living standards of Thambuththegama farming community

In a move to uplift the living standards of the farming communities, Keells Super has established a dedicated collection center in Thambuththegama to collect the dry zone fruits and vegetables that are widely grown in this area.

 

Senior Manager – Sourcing at JayKay Marketing Services Nihal Senarath said, “We started off these collection centers with nearly 15 – 20 farmers with us, but now the numbers have grown up to 60 – 70.”

 

“We collect fruits and vegetables from nearly 45 farmers at any given time. Farmers also grow up-country vegetables like Cabbage and Cauliflower apart from the general dry zone vegetables. We always focus on buying high quality and fresh vegetables at a reasonable price. We pay special attention to harvesting and post harvest handling. Therefore we are able to maintain a wastage level of maximum 2% (out of the total harvest) in the transportation process from Thambuththegama to Colombo. We often conduct training sessions and workshops for farmers on producing good quality harvest and reducing wastage. Sometimes we get together with the ITI and make the farmers aware of the packaging techniques and transportation and we even take them to our Keells Super outlets and show them how their crops are being purchased by the consumers. In this way we give them a better understanding of the customer requirements with hands-on experience.”

Going a step further in their initiative, Keells Super also facilitates for farmers who deal with them to obtain loans from banks such as HNB. As such, the transaction gets debited to their accounts within two days. Recently a workshop was held by Keells Super and HNB for the farmers, where they were introduced to this loan scheme for agriculture development.

Workshops have been also conducted for the farmers in partnership with the Institute of Post Harvesting Technology of Anuradhapura in order to give them a technical understanding on areas such as post harvest technology, packaging and transportation etc. Farmers have also been provided with better quality seeds from CIC and together with advice on how to further enhance their harvest.

“The officers of the Keells Super Thambuththegama collection center help the farmers of Kabithigollawa and Galenbindunuwewa as well in developing the quality of their crops. As a result, the quantities of fruits and onions they harvest have increased. The relationship between Keells Super and our farmers has a history of over five years and we expect to continue to encourage the farming community and thereby provide fresh and good quality fruits and vegetables to our consumers,” added Nihal.

By building up long term strategic relationships Keells Super’s objective is to uplift the agriculture industry of the country which they believe will only result in providing better quality fresh fruits and vegetables to their consumers. “We have recently initiated growing Dragon Fruits which was implemented with a high investment. Dragon fruits have a good demand in the local as well as in the international markets and they are now available at all our Keells Super outlets,” says Nihal. “We also grow fruits such as Mango, Wood apple, Papaw and Lime in addition to dragon fruits as well as dry zone fruits and vegetables such as Cucumber, Brinjals, Melon, Snake Gourd, Long beans, Luffa, Thai Eggplant etc.”

By uplifting the living standards of the village farming communities through programmes such as these, Keells Super envisions providing fresh vegetables and fruits to the consumers on a constant basis. This programme benefits the Sri Lankan consumers by exposing them to a variety of fresh, good quality fruits as well as vegetables which can only be found at their Supermarket outlets located island wide at low prices. The vital role that Keells Super plays as the middle-man here is highly commendable.

Photo caption: Senior Manager – Sourcing at JayKay Marketing Services Nihal Senarath (left) and workers at the collecting centre.