The Hindu Business Line : Campco earns Rs 21 cr in arecanut

Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd, which procured arecanut worth Rs 280 crore to the tune of 3.65 lakh quintals during 2005-06, is planning to procure and market around 4.5 lakh quintals of arecanut during the current financial year.

Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, Mr S.R. Rangamurthy, Campco President, said the arecanut wing of the co-operative earned a profit of Rs 21 crore during the 2005-06. "All efforts will be made to maximise the profit during the current fiscal," he said.

More sub-branches

In an effort to reach the arecanut growers at their doorsteps, Campco has opened sub-branches in 12 places in Karnataka and Kerala.

The cooperative, in association with the local co-operative societies in arecanut-growing areas, will open more such sub-branches. "We are planning to open more and more branches to facilitate the grower to sell his product near his doorstep," he said.

Many private traders in the region are purchasing arecanut at the doorsteps of the growers.

Mr Rangamurthy claimed that marketing of arecanut in small packets has become a success in Gujarat.

The co-operative, which sold 5,216 quintals of arecanut worth Rs 4.88 crore in small packets, earned a profit of Rs 9 lakh in this segment.

"We are planning to expand our retail marketing venture in Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Surendranagar, and a survey has already been conducted in this regard," he said.

The co-operative will use its chocolate marketing network to market `Kaju Supari' - a value-added product of arecanut.

He said that the sales of around 5 quintals of `Kaju Supari' during April has made the co-operative confident of selling good quantity of the value-added product during the current fiscal.

Imports

To a query on the import of arecanut, he said the Union Government has cancelled the import of arecanut through Advance Licence Scheme. However, some of the traders are importing it under `job work' scheme.

Elaborating on the `job work' scheme, he said the importers import arecanut for extraction of tannin and re-export them to the supplier. Around 16,000 tonnes of arecanut is being imported for tannin extraction.

"However, no tannin is extracted under this scheme. Importers dump imported arecanut in the domestic market," he said. The Commerce Ministry has been urged to stop this, he said.

Online trading

Asked about the recent introduction of arecanut in futures market, he said Campco would take active participation in the online trading of arecanut once the delivery system is introduced in this trade. He hoped that the delivery system would be introduced from June 2006.

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