High Level Wood Fashion opens new showroom

High Level Wood Fashion (HLWF), the innovative designers and manufacturers of timber products for the construction industry recently opened its new showroom at Borella Road, Pannipitiya.

Managing Director of the company, Rohitha Udaya Kumara said that with the scale of production, new technology used together with well planned production process HLWF can now provide its products at a competitive price affordable to the average customer.

Earlier, we mainly focused on the upmarket. During the past few years, the business grew well with the boom in the construction industry and we were able to scale up our business and introduce modern technology to the production process. Therefore even with the extremely high timber prices we are able to bring down the prices of our products, he said.

Today we have a well organised production line including a saw mill, chemical treatment facility, Kiln facility, a laboratory and the workshop at our Homagama factory. Therefore, we can provide timber products of international standard.

We produce all wood products needed in the construction of houses such as doors, windows, door and window frames, staircases, pantry cupboards, roofs and ceilings. We use high quality timber such as Jak, Teak, Mahogany or imported timber such as Kempas and Balaw, Udaya Kumara said.

Year 2007 was a flourishing year for HLWF. It won the excellence award for timber products at the 2007 product award ceremony of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA). It is the only SLIA excellence award for timber products after seven years. It also won an award for the best display at the construction exhibition organised by the National Construction Association.

Udaya Kumara said that the company got patent rights for four new designs introduced in 2007. We have introduced new product designs, special designs for doors for 2008 and applied for patent rights for them as well. We have very innovative new product designs to be presented at the Annual Product Award 2008 of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architect, he said.

In this market, still people do not consider quality and the standard of the wood products. People believe that if the variety of timber is good, the product is good. But this is not always true.

We have to treat timber to meet the quality because even jak or teak timber available in the market are not matured, Udaya Kumara said. To address the shortage of skilled technical workers in the industry HLWF facilitates its workers to obtain NAITA vocational training certificates.

Employees can obtain a three-year NAITA vocational training certificate with on-the-job training and by sitting for NAITA examinations. This gives recognition for the employees as well as their skills and the quality of the work improves, Udaya Kumara said.

GW