FieldFresh Foods, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and the Del Monte Pacific arm, DMPL India, is planning to source pineapple from West Bengal. Keeping an eye on the billion dollar fresh fruit and processed fruit market in India, Fieldfresh is also beefing up its back-end operation.
It is setting up a research unit in north Bengal to undertake studies on the productivity of the fruit in pineapple growing regions in the state. In fact West Bengal government is already setting up an agri-export zone for pineapple in Uttar Dinajpur, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri with a proposed investment of Rs 54.5 crore.
The company, which sources and markets fresh produce for domestic market as well as markets overseas, procures apple from Jammu & Kashmir and banana from Gujarat and Maharashtra.
?We will procure almost 15,000 tonne fruit during the current fiscal,? said Sanjay Nandrajog, chief executive officer of FieldFresh.
The company also exports baby corn and sweet corn to the European market. It has exported 700 tonne of baby corn and 150 tonne of sweet corn this year to the UK. It sources sweet corn and baby corn from Maharashtra and Punjab where it has almost 4,000 acres under contract farming.
Present at a press briefing in Kolkata, Nandrajog said the manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu will be up and running by second half of 2010. The facility at Hosur, spread over 20 acres, will consist of four different plants with a capacity of filling 300 cans and 300 bottles per minute. It will also have a capacity of producing 25 tonne ketchup per hour.
