Ceylon Leather Products Ltd (CLPL), manufacturers leather footwear and leathergoods, were planning to open a Rs25 million Initial Public Offering (IPO) in April.

‘With the IPO, we seek a listing on the main board of the Colombo Stock Exchange’, a company spokesman said. The company plan to increase their manufacturing capacity in a bid to expand export markets with the money raised through the IPO.

Currently it has three production facilities: a tannery where leather is processed from the raw, a shoe factory which produces leather footwear and a leathergoods factory which manufactures all types of leather products other than footwear.

The tannery at Mattakkuliya is the largest tannery in Sri Lanka and was designed and set up by foreign experts. It produces chrome and vegetable tanned leather and has the capacity to produce three million sq ft of leather per annum. The shoe factory has the capacity to produce 2,000 pairs of leather footwear a day.

One of the oldest ventures, the CLPL was formerly the state owned Ceylon Leather Products Corporation which was privatised in 1991. It began in Mattakkuliya in 1942 under British rule to manufacture boots and

accessories for the British armed forces.

Later it came under the Department of Industries and manufactured leathergoods for the local and international markets.

At present, CLPL is also the main supplier for the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and several other private sector institutions. On average the company supplies goods worth Rs60 million to the private sector and goods worth Rs200 million to the Armed Forces.

The company’s main overseas markets include Germany, Italy and Japan. They are in the process of negotiating with several other markets for their ‘niche’ products’.

The company reported a consolidated net profit of Rs16.8 million for the year ended March 31, 2002. The company’s directors are: S A B B N Samarakkody (chairman), M N R de Silva (deputy chairman), M A Abeynaike, S E Satarasinghe, B M Amarasekera, Nihal Abeysekera and Dr Uditha Liyanage.

Source: Daily News, Colombo