Dankotuwa Porcelain Limited (DPL), a leading domestic tableware manufacturer, has negotiated to purchase a new kiln and several new glazing machines from a German manufacturer going out of business at very favourable prices enabling the modernization and expansion of its factory, the company said in a news release.

DPL expects increased revenue as well as effect massive energy cost saving following the installation of the new equipment.

The used Issenmann kiln will replace the 21-year old kiln at the Dankotuwa factory and increase plant capacity by 10%.

"With this kiln we’ll be able to produce some beautiful new products that our designers have been working on," said Kithsiri Wijesundara, CEO of DPL. "The kiln can produce ‘non-circular’ items that are in high demand globally, which the old kiln was not designed to do."

"The new kiln is expected to reduce our energy costs from the present Rs. 10.65 per piece to only Rs. 5.15, which would bring huge savings to the company," said Piyasiri Hettiarachchi, DPL’s engineer. "This fast firing kiln can make a product in only six hours, while the old kiln took 30 hours and a further eight hours for cooling."

The new kiln is also an "open firing" type, which does not require products to be covered by a refractory material known as "sagger" that is required for products fired in the old kiln. DPL thus also saves approximately Rs. 3 million per month on the cost of sagger.

The installation of this equipment and the resultant savings have been costed at approximately Rs. 200 million a year in addition to enabling the production of superior merchandise.

In addition to the kiln, two automatic glazing machines have also been purchased from the same German company and this acquisition is expected to enhance product quality and save labour cost by moving away from the manual glazing process presently employed.

The total cost savings in energy, automatic glazing and sagger is expected to be in the region of Rs. 58 million per year, the news release said.

The company founded in 1984 and quoted on the Colombo Stock Exchange exports tableware to markets worldwide including the United States, Italy, Spain, the UK and Japan. It has been recently buying new equipment and expanding production capacity to meet increased export orders.

In 2003, DPL bought another kiln costing Rs. 68 million which helped expand production by 20%.

The new equipment has necessitated boosting the factory’s power generation capacity and DPL is now installing a British manufactured 800 KW diesel generator costing Rs. 24.7 million for use with the new equipment. Although the company already owns two 840 KW generators, additional power was needed to run the kiln installed last year.

"These sophisticated kilns need continuous power, which the national grid cannot reliably provide. The company would sustain a large loss if power failed for more than a minute, hence the need for our own generators. We have also purchased an automatic chang-cover system which would further increase reliability of the power system," said Hettiarachchi.

"In addition, we are using the generators during peak times when power from the national grid is more costly. So we are saving the company some money. However trying to generate our own power using diesel generators can never be low-cost since the efficiencies of these engines and generators are lower than that of large industrial scale generating units."