Kerala State Coir Marketing Federation (Coirfed) has achieved a record growth in procurement, production and sales in 2011-12.
Mr S.L. Sajikumar, president, and Mr K.M. Mohammed Anil, managing director of Coirfed, said the record growth in production and marketing had enabled the company to achieve a sales turnover of Rs 37 crore against Rs 33.71 crore in the previous year.
Procurement
Coirfed procured 7,428 tonnes of coir from individual producers and societies at a cost of Rs 33.19 crore under the income support scheme of the State government. The procurement of coir was the highest in the last 10 years.
The officials said that Coirfed marketed coir worth Rs 22.65 crore both within and outside the State.
The officials claimed that the federation had created around 10 lakh man days through the coir procurement drive. It was also successful in producing coconut fibre worth Rs 54.33 lakh through its de-fibering units established last year.
The production of rubberised coir products also touched an all-time high of 3.4 lakh kg in 2011-12. The federation sold Rs 10 crore worth of coir products through its outlets within the State, a 50 per cent increase over the previous financial year.
There was also an increase of around 40 per cent in the sales turnover in the Coirfed outlets outside the State, they said.
Export orders
The federation received orders worth Rs 30 lakh from Libya and Dubai during the last financial year. Besides, four other export orders are at various stages of being processed.
Coirfed also set an all-time record in the implementation of Coir Geo Textiles programme under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme associating itself with local self-governments in the State. There is a 400 per cent growth against the previous year's achievement.
During the last financial year, Coirfed had developed three new products in the market, which included mattress for school children in anganwadis. It had also opened two new showrooms in Thiruvananthapuram and Harippad.
New products
The federation has also begun a scheme to launch 80 new products made out of coir in association with National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. The state government had also extended all support for modernisation of godowns, modern packaging facilities for products, propagating coir geo textiles, marketing activities and coir production using brown fibre, the officials added.