Ceylon Petroleum Storage Terminal Ltd,(CPSTL) posted a record Rs. 2.1 billion profit despite 19% dip in Sale Volume due to COVID-19 pandemic. CPSTL also paid Rs. 205 million as taxes. Theturnover for 2019 was Rs. 15.3 billion.
Chairman, Managing Director, CPSTL, M.Uvais Mohamed said that this feat was achieved by resorting to a series of prudent economic cost cutting measures that were implemented since last year with the blessings of the subject Minister Udaya Gammanpila, staff and unions.
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Chairman/MD Uvais Mohamed Pictures by Sudath Malaweera
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For the first time in the history of the institution fuel distribution trucks were encouraged to use the highway and the toll for these trucks were paid by the CPSTL. “There routes were re-arranged(Back Tracked) so that fuel was offered travelling the minimum distances.”There were around 102 abandoned fuel transportation bowsers in our yard and we have repaired them and 90 are now plying on the roads.”He said that in a bid to offer a more productive fuel distribution system, the use of railway transport was increased from 5% to 38% also helping Sri Lankan Railway to gain additional revenue.“These two environmental initiatives not only brought down the cost of transport but also reduced congestion and accidents on the roads, reduced pilferage and had many other advantages.”
The Chairman said that they also renegotiated with insurance providers and brought in a Rs. 40 cost saving from this segment last year. Purchase of material such as motor spare parts, stationery, uniforms and other essentials in bulk also saw around a further Rs. 20 million saving.
He said they invested around Rs. 350million to install ‘Internal Floating Roofs’ to their Petrol storage tanks to reduce their evaporation from .5% to .3 %. These were made locally and 80% of this project is now complete and we expect the ROI from this in four months.“We will implement this to our 11 bulk storage depots from the end of the year.”
While having several motivation projects for their 200 plus staff the CPSTL also was among the first local manufactures of hand and floor sanitizers (from the CPSTL Laboratory) which were not only offered free of charge to the staff but to the health sector, tri forces, election officials and AL centres.“We have a demand to ‘go commercial’ with this product but would not move out of our core business. “We also provide state-of-the-art petroleum industry specific laboratory tests to guarantee quality of the products.”
