Who We Are

Biomass Group was founded by Lucky Dissanayake in 2012 with the holding company based in Singapore.

The company started in 2009, when Lucky met Dr. Ray Wijewardene and was inspired by his vision of a green energy secure Sri Lanka. She worked with Dr. Parakrama Jayasinghe on a research and development phase over two years to explore the opportunity of biomass power being a means to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers across Sri Lanka. Outgrower schemes, although prevalent in the tea and coconut sectors, were non-existent in the biomass sector. Thus, the primary focus from the start has been on developing a robust and sustainable biomass supply chain to serve as the basis for a downstream expansion into value-added pellet manufacturing and biomaterials.

In 2012, the International Finance Corporation provided grant funds for a feasibility study on the possibility of planting Gliricidia intercropped with tea.
Since 2012 the Biomass Group has been funded by several international investors. In September 2017 InfraCo Asia – a Singapore based infrastructure development company became the 1st institutional investor. InfraCo Asia is a company of the multi-donor Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) and is currently funded by three of its members – the UK Department for International Development (UKAid), the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).
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INDEPENDENT BOARD MEMBERS

Prasad Galhena

Board member

Shehara De Silva 

Board member

Santeri Rantala

Board member

Our Team

Lucky Dissanayake

Founder/Chairwoman

 

Lucky is an entrepreneur and environmental activist focused on renewable energy and sustainable development in emerging and frontier markets. Previously a corporate career in the media – in TV, newspapers, magazines & books. In 2019, won the GGEF Eco Game Changer Gold Award. 
Ramesh Nanayakkara
Chief Operating Officer

 

Ramesh brings in over 15 years of cross-industry experience from leading MNCs in FMCG, building materials to telecommunication. His expertise primarily spread across end to end supply chain management, business development, building collaborative partnerships and talent management. He has been senior operation Manager at British American Tobacco (BAT) and Plant manager of Papua New Guinea plant of BAT. 

Departments

A strong diverse skilled core team under these departments at the main Colombo office.

  • Supply Development Logistics
  • Research and Development
  • Engineering
  • Finance
  • Business Development and Marketing
  • HR and Admin
  • Sustainability and Certification 

In addition to our core team, we have a network of Field Officers and Women Village Coordinators across several districts of Sri Lanka who directly register smallholder farmers. These farmers are being registered on a state of the art IT platform to enable transparency, sustainability verification and automation of tasks.

Corporate Structure

Corporate Structure