West Bengal woos plastics body for industry park

West Bengal government has invited plastic manufacturers' body Indian Plastic Federation (IPF) to set up a poly park in the state.

"The industry body should take the initiative to locate possible land and develop a plastic park. The state will extend all kind of help from procuring the land to help doing the project report," Sabyasachi Sen, principal secretary, commerce and industries department, government of West Bengal, said.

Addressing a meeting of IPF, Sen observed rubber and foundry industry associations had come up with proposals for product specific park and the government decided to assist them.

"This is an era of public-private partnership and this is the model we will follow," he added.

The state government had earlier thought of setting up a poly park in Haldia to house downstream projects linked to Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd (HPL) but it remained non-starter.

Now the state was offering land near Kharagpur for the proposed park. However, IPF members, mostly small scale sector units, appeared to be lukewarm to the idea.

J C Agarwal, president of IPF, said a polypark should come up within 20km of Kolkata. "Since most of the units of would be small, requiring area from 1,000 square foot to 20,000 square foot, a polypark at such a distance will not be viable," he pointed out.

Sen, however, argued that Kharagpur has the locational advantage of being close to Haldia. "Given that the entire country is a potential market for plastic products, it should not be problem where units are located," he added.

During last financial year, seven lakh tonne of plastic raw materials granules were exported of which HPL alone exported above one lakh tonne. If this was converted into value added export, with a minimum value addition of $ 400 per tonne, export from West Bengal would have been higher by $ 40 million, Agarwal pointed out.

HPL has of late taken the lead to push value added exports which have touched about 1200 tonne a month. In future this is expected to go up to 4000-5000 tonne a month.