Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka sits on the main east-west shipping lane and Colombo is one of the busiest transhipment ports in South Asia, which means freight access here is excellent - often better than to much larger markets. What has constrained the market is not logistics but money. The sovereign default and currency crisis of 2022 brought import restrictions and severe foreign exchange shortage, and while conditions have eased considerably, EMM still asks about your import licence and payment arrangement before quoting, instead of assuming the restrictions have all gone. Hambantota and Trincomalee handle bulk and project cargo.

Tea, apparel, rubber, coconut

Tea is the signature industry and the factories in the central highlands around Nuwara Eliya, Hatton and Badulla buy withering troughs, rollers, rotorvanes, driers, fibre extraction, sorting and grading, and packing equipment - and they buy it for sites between 1,200 and 2,000 m, which needs altitude allowance on compressors and engines. Apparel manufacture, positioned at the higher-value and sustainably-certified end of the market, takes sewing, cutting, finishing, laundry and effluent plant. Rubber processing - the country is a significant producer and a major manufacturer of tyres and gloves - buys crepe and sheet lines, latex processing, moulding and vulcanising plant. Coconut is a whole value chain of its own: desiccating, oil milling, coir fibre and twine, shell charcoal and activated carbon, each with its own machinery. Spices, cinnamon and essential oil distillation, fisheries cold chain, ceramics and graphite processing complete the picture.

Practical points

The Sri Lanka Standards Institution administers conformity requirements for regulated goods. Supply voltages are 230 V and 400 V, frequency 50 Hz, with UK-pattern outlets. Two monsoons hit different coasts at different times of year, so the humid season is effectively continuous somewhere on the island, and corrosion protection and sealed enclosures matter.

Confirm your import licence position with us before we start manufacturing - that is the one step on this route that still catches people out.