The Hindu Business Line : Rebate sought to disburse accumulated coir products

The Coir Board has requested the State Government to provide a rebate for the coir industry in order to disburse the accumulated coir fibre and products worth Rs 2 crore in the State.

Mr A.C. Jose, Chairman of the Coir Board, said the coir industry is in a crisis following the accumulation of these products due to the arrival of coconut fibre in large quantities from Tamil Nadu following good monsoon there last year.

The Chairman pointed out that the Board had been undertaking welfare measures for the advantage of coir workers under its Model Coir Village programmes. He said the Board is in the process of setting up four more coir manufacturing clusters in the State in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kottayam and Kozhikode.

The Union Commerce Ministry, while heeding to a major demand of the Coir Board, has decided to declare Alappuzha, the nerve-centre of coir activities in the country, as a `Town of Excellence'.

This, according to Mr Jose, would boost the export performance of coir manufacturers in Alappuzha.

The status would facilitate access to several promotional schemes related to assistance for infrastructure development, market development assistance, market access initiative, export promotion capital goods, advance license and import of capital goods, he added.

Regarding the developments in R&D sector, the Chairman said the Central Coir Research Institute (CCRI) had started on experimental basis production of coir pith organic manure (C-Pom) for farmers all over the State. The production of C-Pom will begin at Pollachi, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar and Bangalore as an attempt to promote domestic consumption of pith-based manure.

The CCRI had also developed new technology to treat the un-soaked green husk/dry husk fibre with vegetable oil in water emulsion for improving its softness, texture and shade uniformity. This was a zero effluent process and would go a long way in the reclamation of water bodies affected badly due to the retting process.

A versatile new loom designed and fabricated at CCRI to produce all types of mats and mattings would be launched soon. This would be capable of producing quality products with least amount of drudgery.

Coir geotextiles have been found useful in arresting soil erosion on slopes. The CCRI recently demonstrated that coir geotextiles could also be used for construction of road surface successfully. The technology will be demonstrated all over the State as the Government has planned to construct one road in each district by the use of coir geotextiles, he said.