Sri Kalikamba Fabricators (SKF) that had a humble beginning in a hired shed in Bannadka village near Moodabidri in Mangaluru taluk in 1993 has now grown to offer sophisticated paddy processing technology not just for India, but also for the rest of the world.
SKF Boilers’ Managing Director G. Ramakrishna Achar is scheduled to inaugurate SKF Vardaan, an all-in-one paddy processing plant at Costa Rica on June 6, after participating in a conference on Paddy Processing and Allied Technology in Mexico on June 3 and 4.
Mr. Achar began his career as a rice mill mechanic in 1987 and established SKF with Rs. 10,000 initial capital. He began producing SKF par boiled driers and spread his reach worldwide. As he gained expertise and experience, Mr. Achar began to use stainless steel for the processing units instead of mild steel. According to him, continuous innovation has brought down broken rice wastage from 15 per cent to 4 per cent and the time for drying paddy from 12 hours to just 6 hours.
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Vardaan, Mr. Achar says, has received overwhelming response because of its quality of lowest wastage of rice. He has orders from Central American countries for about 85 units worth about Rs. 250 crore for the next three years and about 1,000 plants in India.
Vardaan has lineage from boiler-cum-driers for the production of boiled rice. Vardaan consumes lowest quantity of fuel in its category with higher output and also helps produce steamed rice, which has become popular these years, he says.
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His earlier innovations included Dhanyalaxmi, a raw paddy drier in the year 2000 and Aroma, the coffee drier, produced in 2005. Aroma helped coffee planters who were facing severe shortage of labour to a large extent, Mr. Achar says. So far, SKF has supplied more than 3,000 food grains processing plants in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria and other places.
Vardaan consumes lowest quantity of fuel in its category with higher output and also helps produce steamed rice