Inspection tour for the reopening of the Badalgama Dairy Factory
Milco Chairman Hemajeeva Gotabhaya and senior management participated in an inspection yesterday (6th) to examine the present condition of the currently abandoned Badalgama Dairy Factory.
The Badalgama Dairy Factory is an investment of 63.9 million euros spread across 35 acres of land. This project, which commenced in 2016, was scheduled to have its basic work completed in 2019. Due to various reasons, it has not been possible to complete that work, and currently abandoned without any use. This project received special attention from K.D. Lalkantha, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation. As a result, the Milco Chairman and senior management inspected the buildings and machinery yesterday as an initial step towards restarting this dairy factory.
Joining this occasion, Milco Chairman Hemajeeva Gotabhaya shared his views regarding the Badalgama Dairy Factory and the future goals of the Milco company.
Today we are at a very special place. What you see behind us is the Badalgama Dairy Factory, which was abandoned after spending 18 billion rupees of our country’s national wealth. In the year 2025, Milco company once again made a very good contribution to Sri Lanka’s national economy, completely brought business operations back to a good level, and recorded the highest revenue and highest profit in history. Those are our targets for the year 2025. But we are entering the year 2026 with an even more special challenge. That is our most special target for 2026. That is to bring back this Badalgama Dairy Factory, which had been abandoned after spending 18 billion rupees of national wealth and set aside, back into this dairy industry once again. We should develop this factory to a usable level for our country’s economic development and take it forward. This is the main challenge for Milco company in the year 2026. For this purpose, the President, has provided us with an allocation of 3 billion rupees. With those allocations, we believe we will be able to bring this factory back to an operational state.
We hope to completely finish the renovation work by the first half of 2027 to make this an ultra-modern dairy factory capable of processing 200,000 liters of milk per day. If we take the loss we have incurred by dragging out this dairy factory, which was supposed to be completed in 2019. So far, we are wasting more than a billion rupees of national wealth per year in interest alone without processing even a single drop of milk. Therefore, this crime needs to be corrected as quickly as possible. For that purpose, my Board of Directors and everyone including our Senior Management are coming together and collectively intervening to correct this as quickly as possible.
