Food Processing Plants and Line in Sri Lanka

A buyer costing a tea bag line usually asks first which certificate has to be obtained before the goods are shipped. For this division the answer is normally none at all. The Compulsory Import Inspection Scheme run by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution under Gazette 2064/34 of 29 March 2018 applies to a designated list of roughly 127 items, and food processing equipment does not appear on it.

What the designated list covers

The schedule is foodstuffs, construction materials such as cement, steel bar and tiles, and consumer electricals: batteries, MCBs, RCBOs and RCCBs, household switches, 13 A plugs and sockets, lamps, cables, kettles and hot plates. Out of Chapter 84 only electric fans with their regulators and LPG valve fittings and pressure regulators are listed. Industrial machinery, refrigeration and agricultural machinery fall outside the scheme entirely, so a Single Chamber Tea Bag Packing Machine or a Food Bowl Cutter does not require a Pre-Export Certificate of Conformity under Categories 1 to 3.

The payment sequence changed in June 2026

Extraordinary Gazette 2493/39 of 18 June 2026 ties advance import payments to Customs registration. A bank may release an advance payment only once it has verified the importer's Sri Lanka Customs registration, must allocate a unique transaction number to every import foreign exchange payment, and must report the proforma invoice number to Customs. Two things follow. A buyer who is not yet Customs-registered cannot wire a deposit, and the proforma invoice number becomes a tracked reference, so the numbering used on the proforma should carry through unchanged to the final invoice.

Duty is only part of the landed figure

Charges cascade rather than applying once: Customs Import Duty, EDB CESS, PAL, excise, surcharge, SSCL and VAT, the last at 18 per cent since 1 January 2024. VAT and SSCL are computed on CIF plus ten per cent of CIF plus duty plus CESS plus PAL plus excise plus surcharge. A tariff line attracting no duty therefore still carries substantial cost, and any figure quoting duty alone will understate delivery to site materially.

A line split across containers

Machinery presented disassembled or unassembled is classified as the assembled article where the Director-General of Customs is satisfied with the reason given. That rule is worth knowing when a packing line travels in more than one box.

Port and site

Containers go through Colombo in practice — Jaya Container Terminal, South Asia Gateway Terminals, Colombo International Container Terminals and West Container Terminal — with Hambantota, Trincomalee and Galle taking negligible box traffic; an expansion programme of around US$2 billion is under way. Supply is 230 V, 50 Hz, and the only compliant socket is Type G: a 2016 government decision standardised on it and sale of non-compliant sockets was prohibited from August 2018, so earlier Type D and Type M fittings should not be assumed.