Orange growers’ body wants Mother Dairy to procure the fruit and market it

Rahul Wadke

The Orange Growers Association of India (OGAI) has requested the National Horticulture Board to utilise companies such as Mother Dairy and its fruit and vegetable subsidiary Safal for procurement of oranges from Nagpur and Amravati region as the 21-day nationwide lockdown has affected the movement of inter-State trucks.

Mother Dairy has an efficient procurement system in Nagpur and Amravati region, said Amol Totey, Working President, OGAI.

Totey told

BusinessLine that Mother Dairy can collect all the produce from Nagpur region and take them to their Mangolpuri plant in New Delhi and can market the same directly from their 400 plus retail outlets in various areas of National Capital, he said adding that it is a prudent solution to utilise Mother Dairy and National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) infrastructure. From there they can distribute oranges to hospitals and other institutions.

He said that OGAI has also suggested utilising the infrastructure of Horticultural Producers' Cooperative Marketing and Processing Society (HOPCOMS) in Bengaluru, as they have a strong network of retail outlets in Karnataka with a good amount of volume-based consumption.

Orange growers from Nagpur and Amravati region are suffering from unseasonal rains, hailstorms and other natural calamities along with the lockdown declared due to the coronavirus pandemic. Although transportation is allowed by road for trucks filled with oranges, there are no buyers in wholesale mandis of the main consumption markets such as Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru, Totey lamented.