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Pune has potential to be hub for food processing, food scientists’ meet told
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Monday, 27 February, 2012, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, Mumbai
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Pune is a hub for food processing given its location and character of population, which is majorly an earning population. Also, there are different initiatives being taken up in Pune. These include the Government of Maharashtra's approved Rs 100 crore project for horticulture development, upcoming mega food parks, vegetable clusters set up by the ministry of agriculture, Wine Board, Deccan Sugar Technologists Association, NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) and NAFARI (National Agriculture and Food Analysis and Research Institute) and MCCIA (The Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture).
This was stated by Pradeep Chordia of Chordia Food Products in an AFSTI (Association of Food Scientists and Technologists [India]) event held recently.
“In fact, NAFARI and MCCIA were the first few organisations to recognise agriculture as business),” said Chordia who will be sending a proposal to the ministry of food processing industries for setting up a mega food park.
Not only this, Pune is situated in almost the centre of the country. This allows it to have accessibility to distribution points like ports. “Take the JNPT, which is just 50-60 km away from the city and provides easy doors for import/export trade,” Chordia said.
He said that if a man spent Rs 5 a day for value-added food then the total potential for Maharashtra would be around Rs 20,000 crore. That would require an investment of Rs 500 crore and would create around 20 lakh jobs for the state.
Given the fresh fruits and vegetables market in the vicinity, Chordia said a sophisticated and advanced cold chain industries taking care of this sector was needed. He, however, did not explain how a regular supply of electricity would be made available for the cold chain industry given the irregular power supply in the city.
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