Dabur to purchase Tripura pineapple

Agartala, May 29: Altogether three internationally acclaimed food processing company, including Dabur Pvt Ltd have expressed interest in purchasing pineapple from Tripura to produce export quality fruit products.

Official sources here today said that Tripura state horticulture corporation is all set to sign an MoU with Dabur Pvt Ltd, Dharma satpal group of Industries and Northeastern Regional Agricultural Marketing Company (NERAMAC) to sell raw pineapple to the tune of 71,000 tonnes per year.

''The companies have already set their target and asked the corporation to supply pineapple throughout the year and we are now in the process of ensuring round-the-year production,'' said state horticulture department officials.

The agro-climatic conditions in Tripura are ideally suited for production of ''Queen'' and ''Kew'' varieties of pineapple, which are naturally grown in Thailand and Tripura in South Asia and it has a large market in Japan and European nations, officials said.

NERAMAC has set up a modern Pineapple Juice Concentrate Plant at Nalkata in North Tripura with a processing capacity of about 5,760 TPA but it is operating at a low level due to non-operation of aseptic filter.

On the other, Tripura Small Industrial Corporation is also operating a small Fruit Canning factory, producing fresh canned pineapple juice and other pineapple products with a processing capacity of 400 TPA.

At present, Tripura is producing 1.06 lakh tonnes pineapples in all the hilly parts of the state during summer covering 3,450 hectare area of land, official record shows.

In spite of such a bulk produce, the farmers are not getting the desired results because of communication constraints as well as poor infrastructural facilities. Moreover, marketing of pineapples in Tripura means dispatch of raw materials to the targeted destination via middlemen.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry had sanctioned the Agri Export Zone Scheme for the pineapple cultivators of Tripura in the entire North East region for ensuring utilisation of horticultural produces in 2002 but it could not give satisfactory result.

Under this scheme, enhanced international market access were supposed to be provided to the farmers besides a necessary infrastructure, flow of credit, transport assistance and other facilities for promoting agricultural export through pineapple cultivation.

UNI