Touchwood moves to total organic practices

Touchwood Investments PLC plans to move to total organic practices by 2012. At present the company uses two percent of chemicals in their agro forestry plantations.

Winner of the National Quality Award 2010 (Organised by the Ministry of Productivity Promotion and the Productivity Secretariat) in the manufacturing and services sector, Touchwood Investments PLC is the first and only Agro forestry company to win the award, said Sales and Marketing Manager, Jeffry Ebert.

The agro forestry practices the company adhered to in the past 12 years helped it to win the award.

The company has achieved many other firsts-including obtaining ISO 9001:14001 under the agro forestry sector, the first company in South Asia to obtain ISO certification, the first company to be awarded the certificate of compliance and the first agro forestry company to be fully insured.

Touchwood is the first company to prove its business acumen by paying dividends from 2007. "We began paying dividends with our vanilla plantations", said Ebert.

We started our plantations with Mahogany and moved on to grow sandalwood, vanilla, coconut and other cash crops.

The company has patented 'shoot bora eradication' which affects the growth of Mahogany. Worldwide, shoot bora penetration is 40-50 percent. "At the inception we also experienced this problem, but now we have reduced it to 0.5 percent.

This enhances the confidence of the stakeholders as it increases productivity."

The company maintains a 100 percent buffer stock as a contingency plan said Ebert.The company was set up arted in 1999 by Founder Chairman Rosco Maloney who is now the group chairman.

The Company is spread across eight countries with plantations in four countries - Sri Lanka, Thailand, Australia and Vietnam. It is the first agro forestry company to be listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.

In Sri Lanka, the company owns 3,500 acres of land spread across 42 plantations in six districts, said Ebert.Corporate social responsibility is intrinsic in its business model and the company has contributed to the livelihoods of the rural community with jobs, water, roads and electricity.The company initiated the Sandun Arana Program to preserve sandalwood plants. Under this program the company plants sandalwood trees at religious locations covering 500 locations up to date.

The company also supported the initiative of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to grow 1.1 millon trees by planting 200,000 plants within 11 minutes in Girandurukotte.

The company has set-up a tissue culture laboratory at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura as a joint venture. A sandalwood oil extraction plant and a vanilla extraction plant are in the pipeline.

SG