Reaching for Success: Jeyantha Industrial Park

After finishing the half-way point of the trip, Travelling University reached its fourth and final destination: Jaffna, hometown of Jeyantha Industrial Park and NEFAD Foundation.

The Industrial Ice Manufacturing Plant was the main focus at the Jeyantha Industrial Park owned by Mr. Senthan who is its founder. The daily production of the plant is 400 ice cubes, which is the maximum plant capacity. The owner has plans to diversify his products portfolio by manufacturing plastic cups as the ice demand fluctuates throughout the year. Currently, his profit margin is low due to facing heavy competition. Financing new projects is a major issue he faces, due to the covenants set by the banks which issued the existing loans. He also wants to utilise the free land around his plant for cultivation, but only pomegranate and passion fruit grow in the area due to the unsuitable soil qualities. He had hopes of resolving his issues with the help of the Travelling University as its motto is to ‘bring out the students’ creativity to optimise the business competiveness of Sri Lankan SMEs’.

The final stop of the Travelling University was the NEFAD Foundation in Jaffna, owned by Ms. Nicholine Saminathar. It is a social organization with a labour force of 120 employees producing 150 sizes of fishing nets. As a fishing net manufacturer, NEFAD Foundation expected Travelling University to seek solutions for their high labour cost as well as the operating losses they continuously incurred. The government policies were making their situation more arduous, and the help of ‘student consultants’ was expected to generate viable solutions for NEFAD to improve the present scenario.

The students of Travelling University then came to face their final and most critical challenge of presenting the results of all the analyses and evaluations. The final presentation was a gathering of many invitees, including the representatives from SMEs as well as significant personnel from the local authorities. Reaching the Success, the ‘student evaluators’ were able to sum up their findings in an enthralling way, pleasing all the invitees. The final presentation concluded with the distribution of certificates to all the participants from five National Universities.

The ‘Traveling University’ (TU) is a signature seminar course of the International Material Flow Management (IMAT) master degree program offered by the Institute for Applied Material Flow Management (IfaS). ‘Higher education for sustainable development’ being the motto of TU, in this interdisciplinary seminar course IfaS aims to deploy its expertise in tangible projects all over the world whilst giving the students the opportunity to put their acquired knowledge into practice in real time.