SECTOR PERSPECTIVES
Standardising Quality
Maliban Biscuit Manufactories focusses on delivering quality consistently
Q: Could you outline Maliban Biscuit Manufactories’ history?
A: Maliban’s history spans over six decades with its reputation as a household brand resulting from a focus on delivering quality products consistently. Founded by Angulugaha Gamage Hinni Appuhamy, the company strives to maintain the highest level of integrity in all activities to build trust among customers.
While safeguarding our core values, we have pursued continuous improvements and innovation to delight consumers of all ages. This determination to upholding the highest quality standards and focus on customer satisfaction has helped Maliban remain a leading biscuit manufacturer in Sri Lanka.
We’ve pursued growth beyond biscuits, venturing into the milk sector where Maliban has become a market leader. As part of our goal to nourish the nation with high quality products, we intend to diversify into the liquid milk segment.
As our third venture, we introduced a breakfast cereal and snack for children – Yaha Posha. Using locally sourced ingredients to help farming communities, Maliban aims to offer consumers a value added product through this.
In 2017, we expanded to the tea industry, looking to source the best locally grown crops to create a quality product.
Q: How important is innovation in the export sector?
A: Maliban has looked to revolutionise the biscuit sector by using world-class ingredients, its experienced staff’s expertise and state-of-the-art processes. Striving for innovation and quality, we have worked to introduce products that are tailor-made to customer preferences.
The customer experience is the focus of Maliban’s innovation, leading to its R&D department adopting state-of-the-art technology. This has enabled us to disrupt local and global markets with pioneering products across all segments.
Q: And how does Maliban ensure product quality?
A: Customers are becoming increasingly conscious about the quality of products they consume. We aim to offer products that are fresh, consistent and manufactured in keeping with the highest quality standards.
This focus was instilled by the company’s founder and our staff members work to maintain this through quality testing.
Maliban strives to identify the best ingredients and materials, which will benefit consumers and society while being environmentally-friendly. Furthermore, we use natural colouring in our biscuits to address customers’ health requirements.
We believe that this continuous drive to improve quality will help the company strengthen its position in Sri Lanka while appealing to global markets.
Q: How can Sri Lankan exporters learn from their global counterparts, in your opinion?
A: In the case of Maliban, its quality, sales and marketing teams have been sent to overseas markets over the years to study global standards of producing, packaging and distributing goods. These standards and practices are then introduced to the local market, and their implementation is encouraged.
Striving to be world-class in what you do is key – Maliban being a three time ‘World Class’ winner at the Global Performance Excellence Awards (GPEA) is proof of this.
