Link Natural Products has stepped forward to empower Sri Lanka’s university youth through sports by joining hands with the University of Ruhuna volleyball team.

The volleyball team of the University of Ruhuna has built a formidable legacy in Inter university volleyball tournaments during the past two decades, where they have had the distinction of being crowned as champions the most number of the times.

With Link Samahan SP Balm sponsoring the University of Ruhuna’s volleyball team’s sports kit , the team was fully geared to face the inter university tournaments .

Samahan SP Balm is an herbal balm that provides safe and instant relief for aches and pains. It is a high-quality product that contains six medicinal herbal ingredients and nine herbal essential oils, specially formulated using modern science and technology to maximise its effectiveness.

Link Natural Products Head of Marketing Romero Linden stated, “Volleyball is the national sport of Sri Lanka and the University of Ruhuna has been dominating the Inter-University tournaments for the past two decades. As a company that is focused on supporting the sporting endeavours of our youth, we have come forward to support this highly talented volleyball team and play our part in helping them to continue their winning ways. The players now understand how Samahan SP Balm can become an integral part of their training and recovery and will also help them live a healthy, pain-free life.”

Link Natural is a leading exporter of many products including Samahan to countries around the globe. The company is guided by the noble philosophy of combining the wisdom of Ayurveda with the latest scientific methods and today’s technology to provide consumers with safe, efficacious, and high-quality herbal healthcare products that enable people to live healthier, longer and more active lives. Samahan SP Balm is another one of the company’s significant products developed at the state-of-the-art Link Natural R&D Centre and available in convenient 3g, 7g, 20g and 50g sizes that suit the lifestyles of today’s consumers.

DIMO, a leading diversified conglomerate in Sri Lanka, entered into a partnership with the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Ruhuna (FAUR) through its agriculture arm DIMO Agribusinesses, to develop an agricultural machinery training and a research hub in Sri Lanka.

DIMO spans across every aspect of the Agricultural Value Chain, including R&D, agriculture inputs, farming, processing/ manufacturing, retail and export. DIMO aims to accelerate the agriculture mechanization process in Sri Lanka, while also facilitating the technical knowledge transformation for numerous stakeholders within the industry.  This agricultural machinery training and research hub will also support the research and development initiatives of undergraduate and postgraduate students in the agriculture sector while promoting the implementation of collaborative research projects for testing, modification and adaptation of agricultural machinery.

Mr. Gahanath Pandithage, Group CEO of DIMO, said, “DIMO is at the forefront of introducing the latest technological advancements to the farming community. For the development of any industry, the corporate sector needs to collaborate with academia. Finding the ideal fit between academia and the industry plays a significant role in this endeavour. We have always stood for fuelling the dreams and aspirations of the farming community in Sri Lanka, which is why we look forward to collaborating with academia and assisting in the process of elevating the local agricultural sector with the latest and advanced technologies through this partnership.”

DIMO’s partnership with the University of Ruhuna to develop the agricultural machinery training and research hub will also leverage the opportunity to promote the commercialization and patenting of invented machinery while facilitating the innovation in the sector. This initiative will also be instrumental in conducting practical programs in agricultural machinery testing and evaluation in undergraduate academic programs. The collaboration will also facilitate the preparation of promotional materials and scientific communications for the distribution of knowledge in the research sphere.

In the training domain, this partnership will assist with agricultural machinery training for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Another objective of this project is to facilitate industrial training programs within the degree programs to develop the industrial motor skills of the undergraduates of FAUR.  These training programs will help DIMO to introduce the latest agriculture technologies to academia, farmers, and other government officials in the agriculture field.

Under this partnership DIMO will invest on necessary machinery, materials, and research and training. The University is well geared to offer its expertise, knowledge and resource personalities for this venture.

The Agricultural Machinery Training and Research Hub has already supported several undergraduate research projects focusing on inventing new paddy transplants, weeders and dryers that will be utilized for paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka. Prototypes of these new inventions have already been created.

Photo Caption: Mr. Gahanath Pandithage, Group CEO of DIMO and Senior Professor Sujeewa Amarasena, Vice Chancellor of University of Ruhuna exchanging the agreements