Ruchi Soya plans palm processing unit in state

Ruchi Soya Industries, India’s largest cooking oil and soya food maker, plans to set up an oil palm processing mill in Odisha at an investment of Rs 30 crore.

“We will initially set up a 10 tonne per hour fresh fruit bunches (FFB)  processing mill next year. We are exploring for a location  in districts like Mayurbhanj, Balasore and Bhadrak. The plant will take two years for operations”, said Dinesh Shahra, founder and managing director, Ruchi Soya Industries.

The company has started oil palm cultivation on 28,000 hectares land in Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak and Kendrapada districts for which the company has entered into a tripartite agreement with the state government and farmers.

Ruchi Soya processes about 0.52 million tonne oil palm per annum.

Apart from Odisha, Ruchi Soya is working with the farmers in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Mizoram, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. In Andhra Pradesh, Ruchi Soya has access to over 30,000 hectares of plantation. The company operates four oil processing mills in Andhra Pradesh with aggregate FFB processing capacity of 125 tonne  per hour.

“We also have plans to set up an oil refinery in Odisha”, he added.

On hiking the prices of edible oils in the wake of rupee weakening against the dollar, Shahra said, there is no concern for price rise as the international prices of edible oil are coming down and in India, the price is also falling because of the good domestic oil seed crops this year.

The company imported about 1.4 million tonne of both crude and edible oil last year.