On Jan. 25, the GRI specialty tire production plant in Sri Lanka celebrated three years and many production milestones.
In January 2018, GRI embarked on a new chapter as it opened an advanced specialty tire production plant in Badalgama, Sri Lanka. In March 2018, GRI produced and shipped the first tires manufactured at this new plant. Producing high-grade pneumatic specialty tires for agriculture, construction and material handling industry was an entirely new chapter, technology, and market for GRI.
Built on 10 acres of land, the first phase of the project was a 1.25 million-square-foot plant with a capacity of 25 metric tons a day. It is the largest plant in Sri Lanka dedicated to making specialty tires and the first in Sri Lanka to produce Radial Agriculture tires.
A special feature of the pneumatic plant is its ability to manufacture four different categories of specialty tires across a wide product range. The plant also remains the only one in Sri Lanka to produce radial agriculture tires.
“The rapid growth of the new production plant has been a monumental achievement for GRI. We developed specifications, produced samples, tested extensively and industrialized rapidly to build a comprehensive and compelling product portfolio. It was a massive exercise, from the beginning, for all involved. I am proud to say that today, we have industrialized and commercialized over 300 SKUs,” said Ananda Caldera, executive director of GRI.
Dr. Mahesha Ranasoma, CEO of GRI, stated that “GRI was able to go-to-market and win customer confidence with a brilliant product that offered great value to end-users. Today, we have more orders than our current capacity and therefore excited to embark on expanding our capacity to 100 metric tons a day. We will continue to increase our product range adding more sizes and launching new products but staying focused on specialty tires. Innovation is in our DNA. Our skilled engineers, researchers and technical experts take GRI forward swiftly, covering all aspects of our products, production and process innovation.”
“I wish to extend my gratitude to all who worked hard to make this specialty tire plant a success within such a short time. I am grateful to our employees, our community and our customers who believed in our ambition and our purpose to inspire greatness. GRI is relentlessly focused on taking high-grade Sri Lankan specialty tires to the world. We invite all to join our journey as we embrace opportunities in this generation to create possibilities for the next generation,” said Prabhash Subasinghe, managing director of GRI.
