International collaboration on R&D, FDI will help coir sector: Experts

Ajayan

Kochi, Oct 14: Foreign direct investment (FDI) and international collaboration on research could help the coir industry in a big way, according to experts at the India International Coir Fair.

According to David Hallam of the commodities and trade division of the Food and Agriculture (FAO) of the UN, the division through its servicing of the inter-governmental group (IGG) on hard fibres was rendering assistance and support to the sector in a big way.

There were several projects for product and market development of high value-added coir products, improvement in drying, softening, bleaching, dyeing and printing coir fibre, besides research to have coir-based building and packaging material.

These projects were being implemented by various institutes in several parts of the world and the IGG would endorse new project proposals to the Common Fund and monitor the progress. This would help the coir sector in different countries to keep pace with development and cater to the changing tastes.

According to the chief of research and consultancy of the Institute of Management Technology, Mr GN Gandhi, the need of the hour was to attract foreign direct investment and if needed have separate clusters like export process zones for exclusive production of coir products. Kerala could take the lead, he added.

FDI was important as rather than enhancing production, especially when two-thirds of the raw material was not being used, the sector had to go in for modernisation.

There had to be a stress on R&D activities so that innovative products were made and newer applications of the eco-friendly product were put to use to substitute the synthetic and other eco-unfriendly items.

Mr Gandhi felt that marketing efforts also had to be undertaken and for this there had to be better involvement of the Government and NGOs who could encourage imports for developing countries and work for the preservation of the environment, make chain stores accept coir products more as a social obligation and also set up sales outlets the world over.

Mr Hatsuno Watanabe of Japan said, like the old ‘silk route’, India and Japan coule make efforts to remove trade barriers and create a new ‘coir route’.

Several of the delegates at the fair, including those from Germany, Japan, Holland, Israel, Korea and Russia, stressed on the different applications of coir as soil for bio-engineering and coir pith for agri-horticulture and use of natural dyes for coir products.