The Mangaluru-based Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd, which is planning to market pepper in the retail segment, has inked an agreement with an ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) agency for quality certification.

Suresh Bhandary, MD of Campco, told BusinessLine that the cooperative started procurement of pepper from grower members in December and wants to market it in the packs of 100 gm, 200 gm and 500 gm to customers.

In this regard, Campco has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Kozhikode-based Indian Institute of Spices Research (IISR), an institute under ICAR. Per this agreement, Campco will use the facility available for spices processing operations at IISR in Kozhikode. The facility will be used for cleaning, grading and packing whole black pepper and white pepper using the respective infrastructure available at Kozhikode.

He said IISR would provide training and technical guidance. One of the major advantages of this agreement is that Campco will get IISR’s certification. The retail packs will have ‘Manufactured at ICAR-IISR processing facility for spices’ on them.

He said the cooperative wants to enter the retail segment for marketing pepper under Campco’s brand name from next financial year.

Bhandary said the cooperative is procuring pepper from growers in 13 centres in Karnataka and Kerala. The number of procurement centres will rise to 56 , he said.

Related Topics