The Hindu : Business : CAMPCO's areca nut unit earns Rs.21- cr. profit

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 18, 2006

Business

Business

CAMPCO's areca nut unit earns Rs.21- cr. profit

Staff Correspondent

Chocolate unit records loss of Rs. 3 cr.

MANGALORE: The areca nut unit of Central Areca nut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Ltd. (CAMPCO), a joint venture of Karnataka and Kerala, earned a net profit of Rs. 21 crore in 2005-06 while its chocolate unit suffered a loss of Rs. 3 crore in the same year, said CAMPCO president S.R. Rangamurthy.

Mr. Rangamurthy told presspersons here on Tuesday that CAMPCO procured 3,65,000 quintals of areca nut estimated at Rs. 280 crore and sold 4,30,000 quintals of areca nut estimated at Rs. 345 crore during the year.

The loss in its chocolate unit at Puttur was brought down from Rs. 4.65 crore in 2004-05 to Rs. 3 crore in 2005-06. The loss was attributed to under-utilisation of the factory's capacity. The factory was not getting enough job work to manufacture enrobed and moulded chocolates and was not able to utilise the crushing capacity of cocoa beans to the maximum extent for want of cocoa beans. At present, it was making use of only half the crushing capacity. The factory's maximum crushing capacity was 8,000 tonnes per annum, he said.

Mr. Rangamurthy said CAMPCO procured 53,216 quintals of wet cocoa beans estimated at Rs. 11.12 crore in 2005-06 and 3,564 quintals of dry beans estimated at Rs. 2.94 crore. Its chocolate factory manufactured 1,137 tonnes of finished products and 1,466 tonnes of semi-finished products during the year. The sales of finished products stood at 1,119.32 tonnes estimated at Rs. 13.14 crore. It sold 1,490 tonnes of semi-finished products estimated at Rs. 23.31 crore during the year.

By taking up the crushing of cocoa beans supplied by other companies it earned Rs. 2.46 crore in the form of processing charge.

He said the board of CAMPCO had decided to lease out its copper sulphate manufacturing unit in Mangalore. CAMPCO was finding it difficult to manage the unit after paying 16.32 per cent excise duty and 12.50 per cent Value Added Tax to the Government. In this financial year, CAMPCO planned to buy 100 tonnes of copper sulphate from this leased out factory and sell the same at a reasonable rate to growers.

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