Mega Food Park comes up in Telangana

Hyderabad, Nov 16 (INN): Union Minister for Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal laid foundation stone for Smart Agro Food Park, a Mega Food Park (MFP) in Telangana on Monday.

The Common Facility will be located at 150 kms away from Hyderabad at Lakkampally village in Nizamabad district and ancillary units will come up at Medchal, Medak and Nalgonda. In first stage only 78 acres of land will be developed and the balance land in second phase. It is expected to give a boost to agro-processing in the newly formed Telangana state.

Speaking at the foundation stone laying function, the Union Minister said the project has to be completed within 24 months. Though only two such Food Processing Plants are allowed for each state, we have given three to your state, she said. Those parks which have commenced operations elsewhere in India employed lot of women in such parks. And I hope this park will too give lot of employment to women, she said.

Smart Agro Food Park is promoted NRIs-Pailla Malla Reddy, Mohan Patalolla, Razmesh Kumar Kambam, Dodla Dairy Ltd and Kishore Ganji. They formed into a SPV, a company registered under the Companies Act.

Initially the company will invest Rs 110 crore create the necessary infrastructure for 30 individual units. The Project has already been approved by the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries and supported by the Government of Telangana.

The Company, Smart Agro will invest Rs 110 crore in the first Mega Food Park each in common facilities and leverage an additional investment of about Rs 250 crore. Expected annual turnover of each MFP is about Rs 500 crore. It is likely to benefit about 40,000 farmers.

The Smart Agro Food Park will provide world class facilities for Multi Commodity, Cold Storage, Deep Freeze, Raw Material Warehouse, Finished Goods Warehouse, Silos, Turmeric Processing Facility, Quality Control and Food Testing Lab.

As part of the infrastructure, the company will build roads, power lines, utilities like ETP and STP, Turmeric Processing Facility, Cold Storage of the capacity of 5000 tons, Silos of the material warehouse of 5000 tons, finished warehouse of 5,000 Tonnes, Sios of capacity of 10,000 tons testing lab, refer vehicles, ripening chambers and the training center.

The Park wil become operational by June, 2017 informed Pailla Malla Reddy, Director of the company. It will process grains like Maize, Rice, Oil Seeds like Soyabean, Vegetable crops like tomato, cabbage, cauliflower and fruits such as mango, papaya, citrus, guava and spices like turmeric etc.

The Mega Park contains three vital components viz. the Central Processing Centre (CPC), Primary Processing Centre (PPC) and the integrated cold chain network that connects the CPC with the PPCs. It would also connect the CPC and PPCs with demand centers. The CPC will come up at Lakkampally, PPC at Medchal and Nalgonda.

The MFPs will help in reducing post harvest losses, maintenance of the supply chain in sustainable manner, will be a value addition, will help in additional income generation for the farmers. Thus it will help formers shifting to more market driven and profitable farming activities.

The Mega Food Park aims at establishing the direct linkages from the farm to processing to consumer markets. The project is based on the demand-driven hub and spoke model with provisions of strong backward and forward linkages that create a sustainable agro horticultural value chain.

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries is implementing the Mega Food Park Scheme in the country to give a major boost to the Food Processing Sector and to facilitate creation of modern infrastructure for food processing along the value chain from the farm to the market with strong forward and backward linkages through a cluster based approach. The Mega Food Park scheme aims at reducing wastage of agriculture produce at each stage of supply chain with particular focus on fruits and vegetables.

The project which is coming up under Mega Food Park Scheme (MFPS), under Ministry of Food Processing, will get a grant of Rs. 50 crore. The park will have most-modern infrastructure and facilities for food processing. It will help small and medium sized entrepreneurs, self-help groups and farmer-groups to set up food processing industries. It will also create a market for raw material and in turn provide better prices to farmers for their produce. The park will generate direct and indirect employment of 12,200 people.

The cornerstone of a Mega Food Park's success is efficient logistics that connect the CCs an and PPCs to CPC. Further, the main feature of this scheme is cluster based approach. Implementation of these parks is done through the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) mechanism.