Much demand overseas for Sri Lankan rubber wood furniture

It is Sri Lankan Rubber Wood all the way to the Nordic states, Europe and elsewhere as more and more foreigners take a firm ‘Grip’ on state-of-the art furniture manufactured with local skills and expert planning.

Down at a factory at Mattegoda on the outskirts of the city, a group of men and women are busy turning out office and leisure furniture using local materials and their own skills without copy books to meet a growing demand both locally and abroad.

What is even more interesting is that the bulk of the overseas orders are placed from Scandinavia which is currently the most sophisticated furniture market in the world. This only goes to endorse the quality of the Rubber Wood based products being turned out in large numbers by Grip Furniture (Pte) Ltd.

And the man behind this success story at Grip Furniture (Pte) Ltd. is Major (Retd.) Douglas L. Wijesinha who is the current Chairman of the Company while his son Kamil Wijesinha handles the operation as the Managing Director.

The Wijesinhas have been in the furniture business for well over three decades-starting off in 1979-where they first concentrated on the local market. They upgraded their office furniture range with the collaboration of Praxis Design Associates of USA. in the late 1980s.

Then, in 1995 with the backing and encouragement from The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and the NORAD funded Industrial Co-operation Matchmaking Programme, with support from the Technical Institute (TI) of Norway, Grip Furniture (Pte) Ltd.