Jaimin Engineering Pvt Ltd, a Rajkot-based company, has set up a cold storage specially for onions. This cold storage would be the first-of-its-kind in India. The Onion Growers Co-operative Federation (ONIFED), headed by former finance minister of Gujarat-Sanat Mehta, is lending support to this new concept.
“We have developed and set up cold storage especially for onions in India. The company had studied the technology from Holland and Israel to built the same in India. After two years of study we have started it on experimental basis,” said Yogesh Dahiya, director, Jaimin Engineering. He said, “With ultra Oxazine technology, onion can be stored for one year in a controlled atmosphere and the quality of the onions will not change in it.”
“Generally what happens is that farmers start selling their onions immediately when the crop comes to the market as they fear that they might get damaged and might not fetch a good price for them. But with this new cold storage that has controlled atmosphere, farmers can now store their onions and sell it when they get good price,” said Sanat Mehta, who heads ONIFED.
Mehta added, “We have plans to meet Sharad Pawar, Union agriculture minister and inform him about the cold storage. Moreover we are also in talks with several agriculture co-operatives and private players to promote this concept.” Jaimin Engineering has built the onion cold storage at Shapar industrial area near Rajkot with an investment of Rs 14 crore. It can store 3200 metric tones onion.
The director of Onion and Garlic Research and Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) have certified the onion stored in this cold storage. “We are in talks with ICAR to give a quality certificate to the farmers who store their onion in our cold storage,” said Bharat Revar, director, Jaimin Engineering. The company will be setting up three more onion cold storage in Gujarat at Himmantnagar and Valsad.
Jaimin Engineering has been active in the field of industrial refrigeration field since last 15 years. It has built more than 50 cold storages across India and the turnover of the company is around Rs 40-50 crores per annum.