Patanjali commits to setting up mega food park in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Nizamabad MP K Kavitha, who has been striving to get investments for the state, on Wednesday got a formal commitment from Patanjali group on setting up a large food park in Telangana. The food park could consist of units for edible oil, fruit pulp and spices processing. Kavitha led a delegation, which included legislator A Jeevan Reddy, TSIIC MD EV Narsimha Reddy and others, to Haridwar in Uttarakhand to meet Patanjali group founder Baba Ramdev and CEO & MD Acharya Balakrishna.

The meeting was a follow-up on Acharya Balakrishna’s visit to Nizamabad in November last year. Kavitha presented the newly-launched food processing policy and various progressive schemes of the TS government to Patanjali group’s top management. The delegation also briefed the management of the industrial group on the bountiful availability of raw material such as turmeric, chillies, maize and soybean in the state. Further, procurement opportunities for citrus fruits and other commodities for various Patanjali products were also discussed.

The discussions culminated in the signing of an MoU between Acharya Balakrishna and Narsimha Reddy with a commitment from Patanjali to set up a large food park in TS. Later, Acharya Balkrishna took the visiting  team round the Patanjali campus and showed them the state-of-the-art research facilities there. The group also expressed interest in developing indigenous seed varieties and animal feed value chain in TS. The new food processing policy of Telangana has garnered a lot of interest so far from various business groups in the country.

The Patanjali group made a commitment at World Food India, a global food processing fair, to make an overall investment of more than Rs 10,000 crore across the country. The fair was organised by the Union ministry of food processing industries in New Delhi.