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Harrisons Malayalam launches modernisation drive

— PHOTO: Special Arrangement

MASSIVE EXERCISE: Rama Prasad Goenka, Chairman, RPG group, inaugurating an ‘accelerated replanting and factory modernisation programme’ at the Mooply Valley group of estates near Thrissur on Sunday. Pankaj Kapoor, Managing Director, and Vinayraghavan, General Manager, are also seen.

Kochi: Chairman of RPG Group Rama Prasad Goenka inaugurated an “accelerated replanting and factory modernisation programme” at the company’s Mooply Valley Group of Estates near Thrissur on Sunday.

Pankaj Kapoor, managing director, Vinayaraghavan, general manager, and segment head H.U. Mohammedali addressed the gathering.

Harrisons Malayalam, an RPG Group company, is embarking on a massive modernisation programme worth Rs.56 crore in its plantations. The company is a plantation major being the largest rubber grower/manufacturer in India, besides interest in pineapple, passion fruit, spices, tissue culture and engineering. The company is already a major exporter of rubber and tea.

In its rubber estates, the company plans to invest over Rs.37 crore towards modernisation of its factory and field operations. The two centrifuge latex factories and two crumb rubber factories are slated for overhaul to make it internationally competitive over the next two years.

An accelerated replanting programme is being implemented over a period of four years to phase out the old generation clones and poor yielding fields. Over 1,800 hectares, comprising over 35 per cent of its current tappable area, have been immediately earmarked for the programme wherein existing clones will be replaced by new clones including the RRII 400 series recently released by the Rubber Research Institute of India, Kottayam.

The company is confident of increasing land productivity to record levels within a few years with these measures. In tea, a massive infilling programme is being chalked out involving planting of 65 lakh saplings over the next three years. This will involve an outlay of over Rs.15 crore. The HML tea fetches one of the highest prices in the market. The company exported 4.5 million kg of tea last fiscal making it one of the top producer exporters in the country.

A regular winner of the Golden Leaf India awards, the company hopes to double its exports in the next two years. With this in mind, the company is embarking on enhancing orthodox manufacturing facility by another five million kg with an outlay of around Rs. 4 crore. The company is also one of the largest producers of orthodox tea. The above investment of this scale is first by any plantation major in the State and is expected to create a large employment opportunity in rural Kerala.

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