‘The mega food park at Una will be inaugurated next year’

The first mega food park at Una, Himachal Pradesh, is to be inaugurated early next year, said the directors of project management consultants, NAPL.

NAPL, which is helping Cremica establish the food park in Una, said that the total project cost has worked out to Rs 99.70 crore.

“An investment of another Rs 150 to 200 crore can be expected from the 3–4 companies that have evinced interest in setting up their food processing units in the park,” Ritwik Bahuguna and A P Sinha, Directors, NAPL told BusinessLine.

Stating that NAPL has been associated in the development of this project from the conceptualisation stage in 2012, Bahuguna said that the park is being established in 50.46 acres of land.

“Cremica is developing this park and is working towards setting up India’s largest tomato processing plant in this facility, with capacity to extract 600 tonnes of pulp a day. It would be a multi-crop pulping line to enable processing of other fruits including water melon,” he added.

“We at NAPL have not only been responsible for finalisation of the location and preparation of a project report, but also in detailed design and engineering and construction supervision as well. We are now working on forward linkage to ensure supply of raw material (tomato) from farmers in the vicinity of the park,” said Sinha.

NAPL has identified around 2,500 farmers within a radius of 80 to 100 kms from Una. “The identified farmers are involved in the programme,” he said.

Responding to a query, Sinha conceded to the delay in project uptake, mainly because land was not available. “When we finally got all the approvals, the interest on term loan touched a high of 12 per cent. There has been an increase in the project cost,” he said without quantifying the increase.

NAPL incidentally has worked in similar capacity for four more mega food park projects with similar scope of work at Punjab, Jharkhand, MP and Gujarat, said its directors.