Getting
tech-savvy
Technology
is shaping our food-processing machinery sector. But to survive amidst
increasing imports, we need to pace up this act, says Dr Rajat K Baisya
Food
industry has grown in many dimensions in India. So has the packaging
industry to meet the demand for new packaging systems. These days all
kinds of food packaging materials are available locally. But food machinery
including packaging machinery has not graduated with time to meet the
high standard of efficiency and capacity. Food machinery is still largely
in the small-scale sectors. The players which were there for ages exist,
but they are still the same. As a result, for large projects, promoters
still have to go for the imports of food machinery from Europe and sometimes
even from USA. We have a host of food machinery manufacturers located
in various parts of thecountry, producing some type of equipment orthe
other. But they are small and have notupgraded their technology at regular
intervals.Therefore, even if one can locate all kinds of plants and
equipment here for any food products, numerous suppliers have to be
involved in order to put together the whole project. This is a serious
limitation. Taking this advantage many companies from Europe have their
representative offices in India for concluding the deals here for the
machinery and equipment to be supplied from Europe. For example, Bueller
(a Swiss company) who is a world leader in manufacture of food machinery
has its office in Bangalore. Mariental, a German company has its representative
office in New Delhi and Bertullii of Italy has also been represented
here. These companies and many more are active for years to represent
and negotiate whenever and wherever there is a requirement for new plants
and equipment. Dr Froeb has been doing good business in India by supplying
food equipment from Germany for many years and has been taking advantage
of this opportunity. Only recently, he has stopped coming to attend
all food fairs in India because of his progressing years. Earlier, there
were three large food machinery manufacturers operating in India namely,
APV Baker Perkins based in Kolkata, Alfa Laval in Pune and Larsen &
Toubro (L&T) in Mumbai. All of them have
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