Cold Stores gearing for ice cream, launches two exotic fruit drinks
John Keells Holdings subsidiary, Ceylon Cold Stores (CCS) has a lot going for it.
The company launched two exotic fruit flavoured drink this year amidst plans to launch ice creams through its Rs.270 million subsidiary – Colombo Ice Company (Pvt) Ltd (CICL) incorporated in May last year.
CICL entered into an agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka  (BOI) on July 18, 2016 to lease a land extent of 9 acres for a period of 50 years to set up an ice cream factory.
In January CCS through Elephant House launched Fito, flavoured fruit drink and in March (a hot month) it introduced Lemoki drink which is a Lemon and kiwi flavoured.
Founded as the Colombo Ice Company, which imported and used the country’s first ice making machine, the CCS moved on to build cold storage for frozen products of all kinds and introduced Aerated Water with the distinctive “Elephant” trademark on the bottles, which remained a popular household name for the brand. For over 150 years, CCS has expanded and refined a range of popular soft drinks and ice cream products that are sold across the island today.
Some CCS carbonated soft drinks now contain steviol glycoside marketed as a natural or novel sweetener from the stevia plant. In labels of CCS’ Orange Crush, Necto and Cream Soda beverages, an inclusion of ‘orange’ tables (i.e. medium sugar)was shown. Analysts say that this inclusion probably helped avoid ‘red’ label high-sugar classification.
New products launched by CCS in recent years include four major flavours reducing the sugar calories significantly with the introduction of a sweetener extract from the Stevia plant which has a zero calorie-count.
The company has said that although the 2016 Budget had proposed a revised tax rate (15.7 per cent) effective from April 1, 2016, the CCS has used the existing tax rate of 28 per cent for its tax expense computation, as the proposed rate has still not been legally enacted as at the reporting date.