Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar inaugurated Kerala’s first Mega Food Park that will help generate direct and indirect employment to 5,000 persons.

As many as 20 Mega Food Parks in the country have been opened in collaboration with the Centre, and 17 other projects have also been approved. A park in the Alappuzha district of Kerala has also been approved.

Highlights of the Mega Food Park in Kerala:

• KINFRA Mega Food Park has been set up in 79.42 acres of land at a project cost of Rs 102.13 crore.

• It will leverage an additional investment of about Rs 250 crore in 25-30 food processing units in the park and would eventually lead to a turnover of about Rs 450-500 crore annually.

• The Park will provide direct and indirect employment to 5,000 persons and benefit about 25,000 farmers.

• The facilities at Central Processing Centre (CPC) of this Mega Food Park include multi-product cold storage, dry warehouse, packhouse (sorting grading, packing), ripening chambers, condiment processing with mechanical drying facility and food testing laboratory. 

• The Park has a common administrative building for office and other uses by the entrepreneurs and four Primary Processing Centres (PPCs) at Ernakulam (Mazhavanur), Thrissur (Koratty), Malappuram (Kakkanchery) and Wayanad (Kalpetta) districts with packhouse facilities for primary processing and storage near the farms in the catchment area to benefit farmers. 

• This Mega Food Park will benefit the people of Palakkad district as well as nearby districts of Malappuram and Thrissur in Kerala and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

• The facilities created in the Park will not only reduce wastage of agricultural produce but will also ensure value addition. 

• Farmers will get better prices for their agri-products and their income will also increase. 

• It will provide processing opportunities to farmers, self help groups, and micro-entrepreneurs and create more employment opportunities in the surrounding areas.

Mega Food Park Scheme

The ministry of food processing industries has been implementing Mega Food Park Scheme (MFPS) to create modern infrastructure for the food processing industries since 2008. 

This scheme is now a component of the central sector umbrella scheme – Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY). 

MFPS aims to create a modern food processing infrastructure for the processing units based on a cluster approach and on a hub and spoke model in a demand driven manner. 

The scheme intends to facilitate establishment of an integrated value chain, with food processing at the core and supported by requisite forward and backward linkages. 

It includes creation of infrastructure for primary processing and storage near the farm in the form of Primary Processing Centres (PPCs) and Collection Centres (CCs) and common facilities and enabling infrastructure like roads, electricity, water, effluent treatment plant facilities, etc at Central Processing Centre (CPC).  These PPCs and CCs act as aggregation and storage points to feed raw material to the food processing units located in the CPC.

Under the scheme, the Centre provides financial assistance upto Rs 50 crore per Mega Food Park project.

The broader idea behind the scheme is to bring together farmers, processors and retailers and link agricultural production to the market so as to ensure maximisation of value addition, minimisation of wastages and improving farmers’ income. 

The ministry has accorded final approval to 37 MFPs in 23 states/UTs which are under various stages of implementation. Out of this, 20 MFPs are operational.

Objectives of the scheme:

1) Provide modern infrastructure for food processing units in the country in selected clusters to be identified in a demand driven manner.

2) Ensure value addition of agricultural commodities including poultry, meat, dairy, fisheries etc. 

3) Establish a sustainable raw material supply chain for each cluster.

4) Facilitate induction of the latest technology.

5) Address the issues of small and medium nature of processing industries through a cluster approach with stakeholders managing the supply chain.

6) Provide an institutional mechanism for producers, processors and retailers to work together to build the supply chain.

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