Cement supply to Sri Lanka's domestic market is heavily dependent on imports of clinker and bulk cement. Therefore, supply chain management plays a vital role, which has forced INSEE Cement (Siam City group) to invest in palletisers, shipunloading equipment and a larger warehouse distribution network.

Thusith Gunawarnasuriya, director of Procurement and Logistics at Siam City Cement (Lanka), said, "One key project was commissioning Sri Lanka's first cement bag palletiser at the Ruhunu cement plant. This enabled INSEE to respond faster to market demand fluctuations through buffer stock management, improve truck fleet utilisation, reduce customer waiting time, lower bag breakages in handling and improve health and safety of the cement bag handlers. Taking this best practice further, INSEE will soon commission a second palletiser at its fully-integrated cement plant in Puttalam.

"The new Galle cement plant will lead to increased demand for imported clinker. Hence the company recently carried out a trial ship-to-ship transfer operation at the Hambantota port which concluded successfully. In the ship-to-ship transfer model, larger vessels of 50,000t to 55,000t bulk cargo vessels arrive at Trincomalee and Hambantota ports and then the cargo is transferred to smaller vessels for the coastal voyage to the Galle port, which can handle a maximum of 10,000t to 11,000t vessels due to draft limitations.

"Through this we overcome the constraints at the Galle port for handling larger vessels and berth availability. Thus, in addition to the current operations at Galle, the Trincomalee, Colombo and Hambantota ports too will become an INSEE logistics hub. Further it is planned to carry out the bulk cargo vessel discharging through a material unloading conveyor to improve operational efficiencies in Galle port," he said.

"We will [also] be expanding our warehouse and logistics footprint to improve product availability in the key markets we serve. This means that we can reach out to more customers and reach them faster," said Mr Thusith.

Accordingly, INSEE Cement is working on adding several regional warehouses to complement the existing cement dispatch warehouse network in Colombo, Kurunegala and Trincomalee.