The process industries, such as the chemical process industry, pulp and paper, food, pharmaceutical, and others, are vital to the economy of any country. It is important for a country to be able to convert raw materials into valuable and useful products rather than relying on imports in order to be a strong nation. Developed countries often have large-scale process plants that turn their natural resources into commercial realities.
Sri Lanka has had well-established process industries in the past, including a urea production facility at Sapugaskanda, a sulfuric production plant at Ranala, and a paper production plant at Embilipitiya. These industries contributed significantly to the country's GDP and saved a lot of foreign exchange by producing many of the essential industrial raw materials within the country. However, most of these large-scale production facilities, including the urea and sulfuric plants, have been closed down due to various reasons, such as environmental issues, lack of research and development, inadequate technological input, and poor maintenance.
The process industry in Sri Lanka today has not been able to meet the needs of the people. Despite having raw materials, production facilities, and a skilled workforce, the country still imports paper from other countries. Sri Lanka has the potential to produce sulfur as an intermediate product of petroleum refining and has abundant oxygen in the atmosphere, but still imports sulfuric acid from other countries. The production of ammonia and sulfuric acid is essential for the manufacture of fertilizers, and it would save a significant amount of foreign exchange and reduce the cost of fertilizers. Ammonia is also used in the production of plastics, fibers, explosives, and intermediates for dyes and pharmaceuticals. Sulfuric acid is used in ore processing, fertilizer manufacturing, oil refining, wastewater processing, and chemical synthesis. Even for basic water treatment, the country has to import alum, which was a main product of the Ranala sulfuric acid plant. These two base materials could greatly impact the economy. Sri Lanka produces salt but still does not meet all its own needs, and even in the salt production process, the valuable brine solution (an intermediate product of salt processing) is pumped back into the sea without being used. In contrast, Dow Chemicals started by producing bromine from brine solution in the 1900s and has since become the second largest chemical company in the world, with a turnover larger than the GDP of Sri Lanka. The brine solution is electrolyzed in the "chloralkali process" to produce bromine, sodium hydroxide, chlorine, and hydrogen, as well as hypochlorite and chlorate, which are valuable and essential chemicals in the industrial world.
Sri Lanka is confident that it has oil resources and plans to start exploring them. However, in order to make the most of these resources, it is important to process crude oil within the country using local resources and to maximize product yield, which is not currently happening. While Sri Lanka does have some process industries, most of them rely on raw materials imported from other countries. It is acceptable to import certain materials if the country does not have them, but as Sri Lanka is a resource-rich nation, it is important to maximize the output from its own resources. The country wastes foreign exchange by importing a wide range of products, including food items, on which it depends for 60% of its basic food needs and spends more than 2 billion rupees per year. Despite being an agro-based society with many sources of food and potential for a proper food industry, Sri Lanka still imports food. The country also relies on petroleum-based fuels for transportation, power generation, and household use, rather than developing renewable alternatives such as bio diesel, bio gas, ethanol, and others.
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