DMFDC boon to manufacturers

As the demand by Lankan manufacturers surged, Sri Lanka's leading die and mould facility has reported a $ 47,000 revenue.

"The Die and Mould Facilitation and Development Centre (DMFDC) facilitated by my Ministry is not profit-oriented but focused on research and development but still showed Rs 6.3m ($ 47,637) revenue in its short period of operations due to growing demands. Die and mould industry is the mother industry of our manufacturing. The DMFDC's strong performance is also a sign of our good industrial health" said Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathuideen recently.

He visited DMFDC located within the University of Moratuwa recently.

"The $1.51m (Rs 200m) DMFDC is a successful Private Public Partnership (PPP) collaboration - the funding stakeholders being the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (funding $ 1.1m, nearly Rs 150m), the University of Moratuwa (funding $ 264,662, or Rs 35m) and Die and Mould Makers Association (funding $ 113412, or Rs 15m), a spokesman for the ministry said.

"In its short period of operation since November 2010, DMFDC reported Rs 6.3m ($ 47,637) revenue by providing its die and mould services to local industries. However, the bigger gains from the DMFDC are its savings for local manufacturers since the local industries now do not need to go abroad for the same DMFDC services.

More than 100 industry personnel have also been trained by the DMFDC in technology such as robotics, which if not provided by DMFDC, should again be sourced from overseas. 38 persons trained on CNC Part Programming and 69 persons trained on Parametric 3D Modelling."

"Supported by the Mahinda Chinthana vision, we will also facilitate the implementation of 10-year development plan for this sector identified in 2006 by the Mould and Die Makers Association together with my Ministry and the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the University of Moratuwa", he said.