-By LeN Colombo Business & Crime Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -11.Aug.2025, 11.40 PM) It had all the makings of a B-grade political thriller — a glass-fronted building in the heart of Colombo known simply as “The Iceland Building,” a powerful shipping company nursing an old grudge, a willing media megaphone in Derana, and one of Sri Lanka’s biggest corporate names caught in the crossfire.
Now, according to evidence seen by Lanka e News, two individuals linked to the shipping company operating from the Iceland Building allegedly conspired to destroy the reputation of Hayleys Free Zone Limited, the logistics arm of the Hayleys Group. Their alleged weapon of choice? Fabricated evidence, false accusations, and a well-timed media barrage — all aimed at painting Hayleys as an importer of foreign waste.
It was, insiders say, less about environmental protection and more about market share. Hayleys’ entrepot operation at Katunayake had been eating into the shipping company’s business, and the “waste mattress” scandal was the perfect cudgel.
In 2019, Hayleys Free Zone found itself in the headlines over a consignment of 130 containers of used mattresses. The narrative — pushed hard on television screens and in online news — was that Hayleys was importing hospital waste from overseas to dump on Sri Lankan soil. The images were damning: bales of used mattresses in storage, journalists fanning the flames of outrage.
What was missing, according to Hayleys Managing Director Ruwan Waidyaratne, was the context. The company was not the importer or the owner of the mattresses; it was merely the logistics provider. The goods, he explained, belonged to Ceylon Metal Processing Corporation Pvt Ltd., which had been re-exporting processed mattress components until it collapsed financially.
“We suspended further imports after BOI advice and committed to re-export the remainder at our own cost,” Waidyaratne told reporters at the time. “We handle over 100 clients in our free zone. This was just one of them. Unfortunately, the entire operation was misconstrued, deliberately, by parties with very vicious motives.”
Those “parties,” it now appears, may have included the shipping rival housed in the Iceland Building, working hand-in-glove with senior figures in Derana Media to keep the mattress saga alive in the public imagination. Sources allege that fabricated documents and staged “leaks” were fed to journalists, ensuring nightly bulletins and headlines that would cement Hayleys in the public mind as “the garbage importer.”
Behind the environmental rhetoric, the motive was commercial — undercut Hayleys’ credibility, scare off customers, and nudge international shippers back into the arms of the rival firm.
The scheme, however, may have overreached. Criminal charges are now set to be brought against the two alleged conspirators from the Iceland Building operation. Lawyers close to the case suggest that charges will include the presentation of false evidence to regulatory authorities, defamation, and economic sabotage.
Hayleys has maintained throughout that its role was lawful, limited to storage and logistics under the Commercial Hub Regulation Act, and comparable to operations in free zones worldwide. The company’s free zone services involve dismantling goods — in this case, mattresses — into component parts (fabric, felt, sponge, steel) for re-export.
“Waste processing is a specialised business, requiring safeguards, licensing, and compliance,” notes one industry analyst. “The bigger scandal here may not be the mattresses at all, but the ease with which commercial vendettas can be dressed up as environmental crusades.”
In a country where business rivalries often spill over into political and media warfare, the Hayleys mattress saga now reads like an old Colombo fable: never assume the loudest voice is telling you the whole story, and always follow the money.
As for the Iceland Building duo, they may soon find that in the maritime trade, false flags are not just frowned upon — they can sink your own ship.
-By LeN Colombo Business & Crime Correspondent
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by (2025-08-11 19:48:01)
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