Centre to declare Alappuzha as 'Town of Excellence'

Kochi, Jun 1 (UNI) Accepting a major demand of the Coir Board, the union Commerce Ministry has decided to declare Alappuzha, the nerve centre of coir activities in the country, as a 'Town of Excellence'.

This will help to boost the export performance of the coir manufacturers in Alappuzha, Coir Board chairman A C Jose said at a press conference here last night.

The status would facilitate access to several promotional schemes related to assistance for infrastructure development, market development assistance, market access initiative, export promotion capital goods, advance license and import of capital goods, he added.

Four more coir manufacturing clusters will be developed in Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kottayam and Kozhikode districts.

Talking of the R and D efforts of the Coir Board, Mr Jose said that the Central Coir Research Institute (CCRI) had started on an experimental basis the production of coir pith organic manure (C-Pom) for farmers all over Kerala. Production of C-Pom will be started at Pollachi, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar and Bangalore also.

The CCRI had also developed a new technology to treat the unsoaked green husk/dry husk fibre with vegetable oil in water emulsion for improving its softness, texture and shade uniformity.

This was a zero effluent process and would go a long way in the reclamation of water bodies affected badly due to the retting process.

A versatile new loom designed and fabricated at CCRI to produce all types of mats and mattings would be launched soon. This would be capable of producing quality products with least amount of drudgery.

Coir polymer composite boards made of waste coir fibre and coir geotextiles for arresting soil erosion and road construction were some of the other innovative uses of coir. The Kerala Government has decided to construct one road in each district using coir geotextiles, he said.

UNI ARC DK1243