Edible Oil Companies play a dominant role in the Sri Lankan Food Industry, as edible oil is one of the most important part of the daily requirements. The Sri Lankan Edible Oil Industry in the last few decades has grown swiftly and is expected to increase manifold in the upcoming time.

Sri Lanka has a relatively small market when it comes to a worldwide platform but it has recognized as an “Emerging market”. Comparing to the overall oil industry, the volume of branded oil market is approximately 40% of the total market and remaining is loose oil market

Edible Oil Companies produce oils of different variety that include Sunflower Oil, Palm Oil, Groundnut Oil, Soybean Oil, Coconut Oil etc.

Sri Lanka offers a huge market full of potential and demand for edible oil, due to which several companies have entered into this segment.

Sri Lankan edible oil industry companies can broadly be classified as domestic companies and foreign companies (MNCs). Some of the major players include:

Apart from cooking, edible oils can be used for a number of other uses and have applications in different industries. The edible oil market continues to be underpenetrated and thereby holds immense business opportunities. Vegetable oil consumption has increased due to rise in overall household income, surging retail sector, increasing health awareness, growing population and increasing demand. However, increasing demand has not matched with the level of production and thereby facilitating the imports of edible oil in the country. Growth in the sector is expected to be boosted due to increasing population growth and the increased usage of vegetable oils with the improvement in economic growth, the local consumption of vegetable oil has increased substantially and this pushed up the demand for vegetable oils There has been a paradigm shift in the attitude of people in Sri Lanka towards health. Alarming rise in cases of cardiovascular problems, heart disease, diabetes and many other diseases as well as disorders has created more awareness in the growing population about the need of using high quality oil in cooking. Therefore, there is a great need for edible oil companies to invest their time and resources in research and development of , less costly oil.

Challenges:

• Greater customer expectations regarding quality.
• Effective product life-cycle management.
• Increase in pricing policies.
• Train a woman and the whole family is trained.
• Traditional management culture.
• Infrastructure challenges.
• Talent retention.

Sri Lanka has been recognized as an “Emerging market” when it comes to a worldwide platform.

The current scenario in Sri Lanka is changing of trends from the usage of traditional Coconut Oil in cooking towards the rapid acceptance of Palm Oil. As per the study, over the past three years there is shortage in local availability of Coconut Oil as its been trending down from 80000 MT in 2013 to 59000 MT in 2015. This downfall in coconut oil is seen because of High Value Virgin Coconut Oil exports from Sri Lanka. Above this the local manufacturers of Coconut Oil can supply only 50% of the demand in local market.

So there is a high demand of Vegetable Cooking Oil like Palm Oil developing in the market. In the current cooking oil industry, there is much edible cooking oil under branded and non-branded names. Comparing to the overall oil industry, the volume of branded oil market is approximately 20% of the total market and remaining is loose oil market and there is big gap here which needs to be focused.