The Gujarat Agro Mega Food Park will benefit the people of Surat district and the people of the nearby districts of Navsari, Tapi, Narmada and Bharuch. This mega food park has been set up in 70.15 acre of land at a cost of Rs 117.87 crore.
The facilities being created by the developer at Central Processing Centre (CPC) of this mega food park include multi-chamber cold store of 3,500 metric tonne (MT) (which comprises 1,500 MT frozen and 2,000 MT MA), warehouse of 5,000 MT, individually quick frozen (IQF) of two TPH, pulping Line, quality control (QC) Laboratory and other related food processing facilities.
The park also has a common administrative building for office and other uses by the entrepreneurs and four primary processing centres (PPCs) at Bharuch, Padra (Vadodara), Valsad and Navsari having facilities for primary processing and storage near the farms.
The park was inaugurated in the presence of Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, minister of state for food processing industries, Government of India; Vijay Rupani, chief minister, Gujarat, and Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, Surat.
Speaking on the occasion, Badal said that the mega food park will leverage an additional investment of about Rs 250 crore in 25-30 food processing units in the park and generate a turnover of about Rs 450-500 crore annually. The park will also provide direct and indirect employment to 5,000 persons and benefit about 25,000 farmers in the central processing centre (CPC) and PPC catchment areas.
She added that the modern infrastructure for food processing created at the park will benefit the farmers, growers, processors and consumers of Gujarat and adjoining areas immensely, and prove to be a big boost to the growth of the food processing sector in the state.
The minister stated that the present government was fully committed to providing an environment that was smooth, transparent and easy for investors wanting to start an enterprise in India, and in a bid to make India a resilient food economy and the food factory of the world, the government has made food processing a major thrust area of Make in India. Badal thanked the chief minister and the state government for the support extended by them in setting up the mega food park.
The ministry of food processing industries (MoFPI) is focussed on boosting the food processing industry in India, so that the agriculture sector grows exponentially and becomes a major contributor to doubling the farmers’ incomes and to contribute to the Make in India initiative of the government.
Aimed at giving a major boost to the food processing sector by adding value and reducing food wastage at each stage of the supply chain with particular focus on perishables, MoFPI is implementing the mega food park scheme in the country. Mega food parks create modern infrastructure facilities for food processing along the value chain from farm to market with strong forward and backward linkages through a cluster-based approach. Common facilities and enabling infrastructure is created at the CPC and facilities for primary processing and storage is created near the farm in the form of PPCs and collection centres (CCs). Under the scheme, the Government of India provides financial assistance upto Rs 50 crore per mega food park project.
