By Nisal Rukshan
Hatton Plantations PLC, part of the G&G Group of companies, recently introduced new digitalized technology to tea harvesting fields as a tool for gaining accurate figures of the green leaves (tea harvest) to provide accuracy and benefits to the community of tea harvesters.
The project was intellectualized to eliminate differences in the manual tea-weighing system from the field weighting equipment before transporting green leaves to the relevant processing centres. Software (I HARVEST) inbuilt new equipment was designed by ITECTRO Private Limited with their techno empowerment.
With newly introduced digital scales, each tea harvester (plucker or picker) gets exact figures from the field. After initial digital weighting, the system automatically counts tare weight deductions under dry or wet weather conditions and is connected to authorized devices, reducing the gap between the traditional system and the newly introduced system.
The digitally improved new system is expected to benefit tea pickers by easing their grievances over long-standing unethical field deductions. Thereby, each knows to extract figures after weighting on the field instead of doubtful manual weighting.
Initial projects of Hatton Plantations PLC were inaugurated at Waltrim Estate in Lindula, Dickoya Estate and Vellaioya Estate in Hatton recently on separate occasions with the presence of Menaka Athukorala, Executive Director of Hatton Plantations PLC, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Human Resources. This project is to be operationalized in all estates of the company soon.
Estate officials, information technology service providers and consultants, respective field staff of the estates, and harvesters were in attendance.