Minister of Food Processing Industries, Narendra Singh Tomar has inaugurated the 1st Mega Food Park with a cost of Rs 119.02 crore in Kerala at Palakkad district via video conferencing.
The minister declared that the Mega Park will have about 30 food processing units with an investment of around Rs 250 crore. He notified that the first Mega Park in Kerala is anticipated to create business of near to Rs 500 crore per annually.
Tomar stated- “The Mega Park project expanded over 80 acre, being implemented by the KINFRA (Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Cooperation) will assist in the export of value-added products from Kerala. The Mega Food Park will be immensely advantageous to the local farmers, producers, planters, processors & consumers and will bring a big boost to the growth of country’s food processing sector thus increasing the employment chances in the southern part of India.”
The basic infrastructure contains multiproduct cold storage with the capacity of 5,000 MT, dry warehouse capacity of 12,000 MT, ripening chambers capacity of approx.120MT, pack house capacity with sorting grading and packing capacity of 10 about MT/hr, condiment processing of around 15MT/day and a food testing lab.
While attending the event, Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, Rameshwar Teli declared that the capacities being evolved in the Mega Park will not only help in minimizing the food wastage but also make the value addition of the farm produce sure, which will help the farmers by improvising their income prospects.
The Government of India through the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has granted 37 food parks funded under the Mega Food Parks Scheme, 18 are functional by now and 19 are under implementation as on Feb 27, 2020.
