Bhanu Farms, promoted by Keshav Bangur’s flagship BFL Corporation, has set up a 35,000 tonnes a year processing plant for fruits and vegetable at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.
cold-chain facility
The processing unit, with a cold-chain facility, has come up at an estimated investment of Rs 60 crore.
Peas, American sweet corn, baby corn, white corn, cut green beans, carrot dices, broccoli, cauliflower florets besides mango, litchi, strawberry, orange and tomato pulps among others would be some of the products to be processed at the unit.
According to Anubhav Misra, Head, sales and marketing of Bhanu Farms, nearly 15 per cent of the plants total processing capacity would be met through the company’s own farm spread over 100 acres.
The rest 85 per cent would initially be procured from farmers through mandis.
“The processing unit started operations in December 2012 with green peas supplied from our farm as well as procured through mandis. Moving forward, we plan to enter into contract farming arrangement with farmers for specific products such as beans, carrot and broccoli,” Misra told Business Line .
The frozen products would be launched in Kolkata, Siliguri, Bhubaneswar and Patna under the brand – Nature’s Gold.
The company has tied up with retail majors such as Metro and Reliance among others for supply of frozen fruits and vegetables.
Contract Farming
The company plans to enter into contract farming agreement with around 700-800 farmers in villages in and around its processing unit.
“For the next season starting August, we will look to procure a small percentage of our requirement through such arrangements,” he said.
The share of produce procured through contract farming would slowly be scaled up to 35-40 per cent by January 2014, he added.
“The soil and climatic conditions in these areas are well suited to grow these crops. We only need to address the mindset of people. We will use our farm, which is also our R&D centre for demonstrating the crops to these farmers,” he said.