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Top Honeywell officials here on fact-finding mission

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11 August 2015 02:41 am - 0     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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By Chandeepa Wettasinghe

A fact-finding mission of the global giant Honeywell International Inc. (Honeywell) visited Sri Lanka last week to assess the country as a destination for long-term investments and found the situation pleasing.

“Honeywell is a Fortune 100 Company. They don’t come here like a small investor who has an idea of what they want to do. Normally, an investor comes in and says ‘We’re going to manufacture this and that. What are the incentives you have? Where is the zone we can go into? Can we sign the agreement?’,”

Investment Promotions and Highways Deputy Minister Eran Wickramaratne said.

He noted that decisions of multinational conglomerates are taken based on a long-term perspective, therefore, requiring longer periods of time to plan.
“They take longer-term decisions. So they won’t start a factory and then pull out. The preliminary is that they have cleared the country for investments. So they are very interested,” he said.

The two-member team comprised of Honeywell Engineering, Operations and IT Senior Vice President Dr. Krishna Mikkilineni, who is based in New Jersey, U.S.A., and Honeywell Technology Solutions President Suresh Venkatarayalu, based in India.

The ball started rolling after Honeywell Chairman/CEO David Cote had a slight detour from his Indian trip and made a surprise visit to Sri Lanka this May.

Wickramaratne said that the main focus of Honeywell will be to conduct research and development and product innovation and that the MNC has been directed towards creating a partnership with the University of Moratuwa to create research labs and an innovation park.

“So they met up with the University of Moratuwa Vice Chancellor and his Deputy. The concept of labs for testing is what they can collaborate on. Generally speaking, the academia and industry must come closer,” he said.

Board of Investment Executive Director Renuka Weerakoone said that Honeywell has expressed an interest in investing in the manufacture of high-tech products such as building safety and security systems and energy smart systems as well as software innovation programmes in Sri Lanka.

“We had them meet with Virtusa and WSO2. They also wanted to meet with a multinational to find out about human resource issues so they talked to Unilever. We also had them meet MAS Holdings because they are involved in a lot of innovation and all these companies are involved in business with the US and other countries,” she said.

According to her, the Honeywell team had found the situation in Sri Lanka to be beyond what they had expected.

“Though everyone says to come here because it’s economical, it’s not. They saw that it’s a whole new dimension they’ll get out of Sri Lanka in terms of capacity and skill levels of the engineers and IT people,” she said.

Despite renowned economists saying that Sri Lanka has fallen into a middle-income trap, where it is unable to compete with Bangladesh in terms of cost and Malaysia in terms of quality, Honeywell seems to be banking on the future potential of the country.

“They were very impressed with the potential Sri Lanka has to offer,” Weerakoone said.

She said that Honeywell is also aiming to increase its existing market share in Sri Lanka in the smart building installations and building safety and security systems, while the corporation has also conducted feasibility studies into the Sapugaskanda oil refinery and several other installations.

Meanwhile, Wickramaratne said that two of the highest officials in the company, who usually don’t travel on fact-finding missions, being asked to do so by Cote shows an unusually fast and strong commitment towards Sri Lanka.

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