Making inroads into bulk storage, Cargill India will open its first corn silo in the country with a storage capacity of 60,000 tonnes in Davangere, Karnataka, next month, Cargill India Chairman Siraj A Chaudhry has said.

Built at $10 million, the silo will come up next to the food major’s wet corn milling plant. “While the-state-of-the-art silo is primarily for meeting the requirement of the milling plant, we hope to trade out some space to others,” Chaudhry recently told BusinessLine .

“The challenge is that corn is produced by everybody. And it is stored and sold by people on the basis of their needs. If the corn is not stored well, its quality deteriorates fast. If it is good quality it goes into food, if it is of less quality, it is used in the feed industry. And the worst quality corn is normally used for making starch,” he said.

Storing the grain well will help farmers get a better valuation for their produce.

Recently, opening a conference on corn organised by FICCI, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh urged the industry to invest in storage solutions for corn as its production is picking up in the country.

Currently, India produces 26 million tonnes of corn but the production needs to be upped to 45 mt to meet growing demand, he said.

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