Food tech institute should develop its own healthy food brand: Badal

The Food Processing Ministry is keen that the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM) develops its own brand to offer healthy and fresh products to consumers by leveraging facilities at its incubation centres.

Minister for Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Friday inaugurated four incubation centres at the institute, which include pilot plants for ready-to-eat and traditional foods, milk and dairy products, fruits and vegetables processing and meat & poultry processing at Sonipat, Haryana. A modern food testing lab has also been established at the NIFTEM premises.

Speaking to reporters, Badal said, “These pilot plants will support product development and test pilot production activities of the new generation of entrepreneurs. Besides training in-house students, it will also enable the neighbourhood farming community to learn processing and use their agricultural produce to develop value-added products.”

“There is potential for NIFTEM to leverage on these facilities to develop its own brand which it can use to market healthier and fresher products to consumers,” she added.

The incubation centres are designed to foster innovation in terms of new product development as well as process development, besides serving as a research facility for entrepreneurs and other businesses. The institute expects the new facilities to be self-sustaining by generating enough revenue from the target user groups to meet operational expenses and recover capital investment. The incubation centres and food testing laboratory have been set up at an investment of ₹50 crore.

“Our vision is to make NIFTEM an Ivy League institute in the food processing sector that can collaborate with various international partners in the food processing space and emerge as an international centre of excellence,” Badal said.

Talking about the food testing laboratory, Badal said, “NIFTEM will also collaborate with multiple international laboratories, so that it can certify food products meant for exports, that will have worldwide acceptability.” Such a collaboration will be significant as Indian food companies often find it tough to meet international certification norms.

The lab is in the process of getting NABL accreditation and will serve as the National Reference Facility in the future. It will work with FSSAI and other agencies to develop testing standard protocols for food products, certify food products and undertake research.

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