Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma opens fifth spices park in the country at Sivaganga

Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma opens fifth spices park in the country at Sivaganga :
Kochi: The fifth spice park , an initiative of the Spices Board, has been set up at Mattupetty Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu for processing turmeric and chilli. The park was opened by union Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma in the presence of Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Sunday.

The park is aimed at facilitating the processing and value addition of turmeric and chilli, the major spices grown in the region, by setting up common facilities. The other four spice parks are located at Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh for garlic and chilli, Puttady in Kerala for pepper and cardamom, Kota in Rajasthan for coriander and cumin and Guna in Madhya Pradesh for coriander, fenugreek and garlic.

The fifth spices park was built at a cost of Rs 19.50 crore against the estimated cost of Rs 20 crore. The Spices Board had developed all common facilities like power, water, communication facilities, warehousing, wide roads etc related to the park. The board will lease out the lands available in the park to private entrepreneurs for developing their own processing plants for value addition of spices for 30 years.

After establishing the processing units by the exporters the farming community can link directly with the exporters for selling their produce on a premium price and eliminate intermediaries in the supply chain. The park has processing facility for chilli and turmeric with a capacity of 1 tonne/hour each and steam sterilization unit in batch process with capacity 250 kg/hour apart .

Other parks are in the pipeline during XI Plan are at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh for chilli, Mehsana in Gujarat for cumin, fennel and coriander and Jodhpur in Rajasthan for cumin and coriander, Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh for mint and Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh for turmeric.