Land acquisition takes off for mega food park project

The land acquisition process has taken off for the mega food park project being developed on 282 acres of land at Malipada, 10 km from Khurda.

"Notification for acquisition of land under Section 4 (1) has been issued for the project. Steps are being taken for formation of joint venture company and selection of equity partner (developer) to qualify for the recently published EOI (Expression of Interest) of the Government of India for setting up of the mega food park in the state”, minister for industries, Raghunath Mohanty said in the state assembly.

This project will be implemented on the public private partnership (PPP) mode. The Government of India will provide grant up to Rs 50 crore for development of infrastructure facilities. Besides, the state government has placed a grant of Rs 1.92 crore with Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Orissa (Idco) for investment in the project.

 

IL&FS Cluster Development Initiative Ltd (IL&FS-CDIL) is the project management consultant for the project. A techno-feasibility study conducted by IL&FS-CDIL has been submitted to the Government of India.

After obtaining final approval from the Government of India, the time-frame for completion of the project will be chalked out according to the guidelines, Mohanty said.

"The state government has also identified another site for mega food park at Gadajit near Banki, 50 km from Bhubaneswar. The land acquisition for this food park, which requires 100 acres, is in progress”, he added.

The state government is likely to form a special purpose vehicle with IL&FS for the second mega food park project.

It may be noted that IL&FS had carried a study on raw material availability for the food processing sector in different locations of the state.

It had identified paddy, mango, tomato, coconut, cashew, ginger and brinjal as the products with a huge potential for processing but had pointed out that the major bottleneck to the growth of the sector was the inadequate cold storage facilities.

To give the much desired fillip to the food processing sector, IL&FS had suggested the Orissa government to offer a package of incentives to attract big players in the sector like ITC, Britannia Industries and Parle Agro Ltd.

All the big players- ITC, Britannia Industries, Parle Agro Ltd and Indo Nissin Foods Ltd have evinced interest in investing in the food processing sector in Orissa.