Hopcoms to open procurement and sale centre at Padil

A vegetable, coconut and fruit procurement-cum-sale centre of Dakshina Kannada District Horticultural Producers’ Cooperative Marketing Society (Hopcoms) will be opened at Padil in a month, according to its Managing Director Joe Pradeep D’Souza.

The centre would procure vegetables and fruits from farmers and sell it at the centre and its 15 outlets, including two in Udupi. In Dakshina Kannada, Hopcoms has 12 outlets in Mangaluru and one in B.C. Road.

He said the Hopcoms would pay higher price to farmers to ensure profitability for them in selling their produce to the centre.

Outlet facilities

The building of the centre and other facilities, including a cold storage, was coming up under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana of the Union government, he said.

The 2,000 sq. ft. centre would have a ripening chamber and a cold storage – each of five-tonne capacity – as well as a sorting hall, an office, and an air-conditioned model retail outlet. The centre was being built at an estimated cost of Rs. 40 lakh. In addition, the Hopcoms was investing in laying interlocks on the building premises and generator back-up facility.

Large-scale purchases

Vegetables, fruits, and coconut procured from farmers in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and other neighbouring districts would be sold at wholesale and retail prices, he said.

In the ripening chamber, fruits such as banana, mango, and sapota would be ripened using ethylene gas, Mr. D’Souza said. He claimed that it was a harmless way of ripening fruits and the gas helped ripen fruits in four days.

Farmers who cultivated vegetables in small quantity could sell them to the DK Hopcoms at the centre. If any farmer wanted to sell coconuts in large quantity to the society, it would arrange for transport, he said.

The managing director said the centre would procure the commodities from farmers in the neighbouring districts such as Chikkamagaluru where vegetables were grown in large quantity.

He said that though the building was ready, installing generator facility and laying interlocks would take a month.