Five nutritional all purpose flour varieties to local market

For the first time in Sri Lanka, Colombo Commodities has introduced five nutritional all purpose flour to the local market.

Director Colombo Commodities Food Products Basith Bahardeen said that these products under their brand name Anchor were mainly introduced to address the malnutrition issues faced by a segment of the Sri Lankan society.

The five Anchor products introduced to the market are wheat flour, Atta, Kurankkan and white and red string hopper flour. Basith said that they contacted the Prof. Chamila Jayasinghe of Faculty of Livestock Development and Nutrition of Wayamba University and requested them to specifically design them products to fulfil both the requirement of a flour and also nutrition as an added value.

“They did a three year research and provided us the formula to launch these five products which is a ‘first’.”

Asked why they did not obtain a patient he said that it was because they have to release the formula to the public.

He said that the product is already in the market and response is very encouraging.

“We also hope to export this product to African countries,” he said. Prof. Chamila Jayasinghe said what is unique in these five flour products are that five ingredients, Iron, Zinc, Folic Acid, Vitamin A and vitamin B12 have proportionately been introduced to add nutritional value.

Chairman, Colombo Commodities (Pvt) Ltd, Bahardeen recalled that their company had started as a small food crushing outlet in Kiribathgoda (Nabeesa Mills) with 12 staff members and produced 10 MT daily. At the beginning Ship, Anchor and Wheels were the only brands we launched and in 1986 we moved to Colombo Fort and launched retail operations. “We are the

only Sri Lankan Lentil processing company to obtain the SLS certification.” Today Colombo Commodities have expanded to be a major Export House having diversified business into areas of Agricultural Commodities, Ready-to-Eat Food, Canned Food, Garlic, and Rice.

“Today our products list ranges from spices to oils, lentils topulses, pastas to noodles and salt to canned fish.”