Ruchi Soya targets four-fold rise in palm plantation

Ruchi Soya Industries today said it would increase palm plantation acreage four-fold to two lakh hectres in India in next three years so as to bridge the country's demand-supply gap for palm oil.

"India is importing around forty lakh tonnes of palm oil each year. We want to plug the gap by increasing our palm plantation by four times to two lakh hectres in next three years," Ruchi Soya Industries Director V K Jain said here.

The company, the largest branded marketer of palm oil in India, is looking for land in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Assam for contract farming. The existing plantation on 50,000 hectres is also done in these states.

Ruchi Soya Industries, he said, will import saplings from African countries and give them to the farmers with a buy-back guarantee of their produce.

Besides undertaking plantation in India, Ruchi Soya recently signed an agreement with the Ethiopian government to grow palm on 50,000 hectres of land in that country. It also plans to begin the same on a substantial area in Indonesia.

Ruchi Soya Industries has chalked out an outlay of around Rs 100 crore to increase refinery capacity at both Kandala and Haldia by two lakh tonnes a year.

"Our current palm oil refinery capacity is 20 lakh tonnes a year and we plan to increase that by an additional two lakh tonnes per annum. This will be through browfield expansion at our Kandala and Haldia refineries," Jain said.