African agri major ETG's Indian arm to set up pulse milling plants

Total project cost, including working capital for processing & trading, is pegged at $98 mn

A leading agricultural conglomerate in Africa - ETG's Indian subsidiary is planning to set up a cluster of four pulse milling plants near the Port of Kolkata in an area zoned for green business activities such as grain milling, tea packing, etc.

The total cost of the project, including working capital for processing and trading, is estimated to be around $98 million.

The proposed investment is IFC A Loan of 5-year tenor in India’s largest pulses processing and marketing platform, ETC Agro Processing India Private Limited (ETC Agro). 

The investment will help an Africa-based Group expand its investment and production in India and provide further impetus to trading of essential agricultural commodities both within Asia (Myanmar, India) as well as between Asia and Africa, said IFC.

The land upon which the mill now stands is adjacent to other areas of the port used for warehousing pulses. 

The new facilities will process inputs such as Yellow Peas (Watana) & red lentils (Masoor Dal) and involves the receipt (delivered by barge to the Kolkata operation), then cleaning, hulling, drying, splitting, sorting, polishing (as needed depending on the desired attributes of the finished product), and finally packing them. 

The project construction is nearing completion. Major civil work has been completed and milling has been already ongoing on 50 per cent of entire installed capacity. Additional small-scale construction is on-going that includes a packaging building, permanent offices, warehouse, and worker accommodation.