Comments
The Chennai-based $300-million Avigna group, which is into infrastructure business, will present the business plan of its ₹2,000-crore Food Terminal Market project near Chennai to the newly-formed DMK government.
The previous AIADMK government had given all the permissions for the project but due to elections the company could not start the operations, said Abhijit Verma, Executive Director & CEO at Avigna Group.
The project has an opportunity to create turnover of around ₹35,000 crore and generate employment for around 10,000 people, he told BusinessLine .
The company is also putting up a similar project in Madhya Pradesh. It will be first-of-its-kind project in India in over 10 million and 26 million sq ft in Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh, respectively.
“The project is set to revolutionise the traditional sabzi mandi, which is one of the major platforms today for the farmers to sell their produce. It will be aligned with the recently implemented Farm Bill, which opens up access for the farm produce. The food terminal market is designed to forever change the traditional concept of a mandi, which will we feel will revolutionise the way farmers buy and sell, the way we trade food grains and fresh produce and catapult the whole sector into the 21st century,” he said.
The project is conceptualised with the aim of building a place for national, international trade, with a yard and a dry port, hospitals and budget hotels for farmers with a plan to introduce a day pass so that farmers can bring even their families along.
The project will be financed with 40 per cent equity; 60 per cent debt with part of the equity coming from Foreign Direct Investment. Fruit and vegetables, sea foods, dairy & meat, grains and organic produce are some of the sectors to be covered in the park.
The market in Chennai will have 12 lakh tonnes per annum handling capacity with centralised processing facilities, primary processing centres & collection centres along with multi temperature cold storage; tropical fruits ripening chambers; meat processing; food processing; ice chamber and wholesale market.
Business model
The business model of the market will be leasing and collection of user fee; third party logistics; express deliveries (Farm to Park); exports; facility management and asset management, he added.
The major stakeholders in the project will be farmer-producer organisations, wholesalers, MSME food companies, large food industries, big retailers, large e-comm players and educational & research institutions (agriculture and fisheries universities).
Wastage would be reduced from the present level of 30-33 per cent to 3-5 per cent in the overall process, he said.
The expected forex earnings from exports is expected to be ₹5,000 crore, he added.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.