ITC’s Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division on Monday said its officials have been engaging with farmers growing pulp wood plantation to enable them to supply their ready produce directly to its mill at Sarapaka in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district.
The company, in a press release, talked about how it is taking measures to facilitate the realisation of fair prices to such farmers as well as spearheading measures to streamline and strengthen critical aspects of procurement, including payment.
In cases of direct supply, purchase orders (PO) are being issued to the farmers and payment as per mill landed price, including the cost of transportation and harvesting, is being made directly to their respective bank accounts within 10 days of receipt of material with acceptable quality, the release said.
Noting that ITC had, in April 2018, rolled out a special initiative to procure wood directly from farmers in Khammam through direct PO, the company said last month nearly 75% of the 15,175 tonnes of wood procured from Khammam was through direct PO from farmers.
COO of ITC’s Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division, Vadiraj Kulkarni said ITC has implemented a large scale afforestation programme that has created a green cover over 7,20,000 acres and large scale livelihoods. The company has also communicated to the farmers that those unable to arrange for harvesting/transportation, may use the ITC-nominated suppliers to sell their produce on tonnage basis and not area (acre/hectare) basis.
Farmers are requested to conduct all such transactions only through banking channels, so that payments can be monitored/verified by ITC. The company is implementing a plan to ensure that all mature plantations are harvested by the end of season (June 2019), for plantations that were planted in June-July of 2015 season. Farmers, the release said, were free to sell their produce to anyone and are not tied down to ITC in any manner.
