The buyer-seller meet held as part of the Coir Kerala 2014 on Monday has evoked good response from participants with business deals worth ₹150 crore reported to have been struck between global buyers and manufacturers.
Apart from the private exporters, the PSUs also zeroed in on business deals with buyers. According to Adoor Prakash, State Minister for Revenue and Coir, “we expect the deals to be worth close to our target of ₹150 crore against last year’s figure of ₹100 crore. Only at a later stage, we will be able to exactly quantify the deals.”
The buyer-seller meet is the most crucial interactions of the Coir Kerala event. More buyers and exhibitors are taking interest in Coir Kerala every year and we want to see this increased participation translate into a solid business opportunity for everyone, he said.
“We want to see high-quality coir as well as value-added products and innovations from Kerala make their way to new markets worldwide. The R&D had helped the industry to come out with lot of value-added coir products and the government is now looking at the possibility of producing energy from coir pith.”
Coir Secretary Rani George said the government was successful in finding new markets for coir products through Coir Kerala and the main aim of organising the event is to increase the business and thereby ensuring more jobs and better wages for over three lakh coir workers in the state.