UP govt clears land hurdle for PepsiCo's Rs 500 crore plant in Mathura

The Uttar Pradesh government has cleared the land possession hurdle for global food and beverage major PepsiCo’s greenfield plant in Mathura district.

The company will invest more than Rs 500 crore in the proposed plant at Kosi, Mathura through the foreign direct investment (FDI) route and create nearly 1,500 direct and indirect jobs.

Earlier, the UP State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC) had allotted 36 acres of land to the company. However, the local farmers had been agitating owing to their long pending demands and resisting the physical handover of a nearly 27 acres, thus delaying the starting of the project.

In a recent meeting to review industrial projects, for which the Yogi Adityanath government had signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with private companies, UP infrastructure and industrial development commissioner (IIDC) Alok Tandon had directed the Mathura administration and UPSIDC officials to resolve the land acquisition hurdle pertaining to the PepsiCo project.

“The issue has been resolved and the company has started the civil work,” Tandon told Business Standard here today. He said it was after a gap of 13 years that PepsiCo was setting up a food processing plant in India after its Punjab unit, which was set up in 2006.

While, PepsiCo plans to invest more than Rs 500 crore, other independent ancillary units are estimated to bring additional investment of Rs 500 crore, thus totalling Rs 1,000 crore in total investment related to the entire potato chips project value chain.

PepsiCo will procure 60,000 tonnes of potato annually from the local farmers for processing in the plant, which a PepsiCo spokesperson, said would be made operational before mid 2021.

On July 28, 2019, PepsiCo plant was among the 292 industrial projects totalling more than Rs 65,000 crore, which witnessed their foundation laying in Lucknow at the hands of union home minister Amit Shah.

The projects, whose foundation was laid, spanned different sectors, including agriculture, tourism, micro small & medium enterprises (MSME), excise, healthcare, power, textile, urban development, science & technology, green energy etc. Nearly 54% of these projects pertain to Western UP, followed by 19% Central UP, 13% Eastern UP, 4% Bundelkhand, while about 10% of the projects had multiple territory footprint.

The ground breaking ceremony (GBC) was also addressed by top industry captains, including Gautam Adani, N Chandrasekaran, realty major Lulu Group chairman Yusuf Ali, Pepsico India chief Ahmed El Sheikh, Samsung Electronics Southwest Asia president & CEO H C Hong, Sudhir Mehta and Naresh Trehan.

These projects were part of the Rs 4.68 trillion worth of 1,047 MoU signed by the Adityanath government with public and private sector companies at the ‘UP Investors Summit’ in Lucknow on 21-22 February, 2018. The Summit was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the presence of top industrialists viz. Mukesh Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Adani etc.

On July 29, 2018, Modi had presided over the first GBC, wherein foundation of projects worth Rs 60,000 crore was laid. He had also exhorted UP and Maharashtra to compete for emerging as India’s first $ trillion state economy.