Mr Sanjay Suryawanshi – a post graduate in agriculture extension hails from an agricultural family from Sangli, Maharashtra.
Mr Sanjay began his stint with the agricultural sector through a pesticide company in 1999. He now works at Citrus Processing Pvt Ltd. based at Nanded, Maharashtra. As the name suggests, they process citrus fruits like mosambi and oranges.
Are the fruits that companies like yours procure, organic?
From India, grapes is one of the leading export fruits. India exports grapes in huge quantities to Europe. There are different kinds of certifications to be catered to. So use of pesticides and other such inputs should be used with caution. All these things are organized and established in the production belt in Maharashtra especially in the Nasik-Sangli districts.
Before joining with the citrus processing sector, for almost 15-16 years I was associated with the grapes export field. I am aware that in this sector we compete with Chile and many South African countries. Last year we supplied more than 10,000 containers to the European market and all countries put together, we supply grapes to about 20,000 containers globally, in terms of volume. Hence, we have the European market in hand and we are working towards capturing the Russian, Far East markets like Malaysia, Thailand, etc. We have our presence in Bangladesh and Arab countries too. In the last 3 years, we have begun exporting to Canada and have penetrated into the American market as well.
Also, growers in the fruit category are highly aware of these requisites. In my opinion, organic is quite a false term. We need residue-free fruits and vegetables that is safe for human consumption.
Growers use many pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers, during farming but in permissible limits. They are aware of the PHI (Post Harvesting Interval). That way we won't have any problem with respect to residue. We export 20-30% quantity to Germany, which is a very health-conscious market.
Talking about the citrus belt, we deal with Nagpur mandarin and mosambi. The mosambi production belt is in Andhra Pradesh, Telgana and in Maharashtra-Aurangabad belt. We source C and D grade fruits, also termed as industrial grade fruits, for processing and we make frozen concentrate orange and mosambi juices. Our customers are Coca Cola, Pepsico, Dabur and Hindustan Unilever and even Johnson and Johnson because we deal with residue-free products.
Citrus fruits are 7-8 months crop. The fruits contain almost nil content of pesticides and fungicide residue. There is not much use of pesticides etc. compared to the grape and pomegranate category. Nevertheless we have taken an Indian certification which is not necessary for our customer but for public awareness. Also, we keep the dialogues open with our growers so that the pesticides, etc. that they use are kept within specified limits.
What is your monetary deal with farmers?
We pay farmers within 5 days of receiving the fruits at our factory. There are of two types of industrial grade fruits. One is the kind seen in Brazil, China, America - these are the top 3 countries and we are the fourth in the list of citrus fruits producing countries. Brazil exports mandarin category juices worldwide. They have adopted mechanical farming and so, we cannot compete with their model of operations. Hence our produce costs more than theirs. Also, owing to the fact that we operate manually, our production is less compared to theirs.
We are the first and the only citrus fruit juice producer company from India. We pay farmers and the middle men. When I say middle men, I mean our service provider who coordinates with farmers, segregate fruits as per grades, send premium grade products to markets like Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangladesh etc. They also ensure that the industrial grade fruits reaches us.
What is the cost involved in establishing a similar processing centre?
These C and D grade fruits have no value in the market, anyway. If these grade fruits are sent to any market, they don't even fetch you the value enough to cover for the transportation. Since the last 3-4 years, we have purchased almost 15,000 metric tons of oranges from Nagpur and Amaravati areas and we pay the farmers almost Rs 25 crores. As per the market, the value of the fruit wasn't more than 5 crores. We added 20 crores into the market for the same grade of fruit.
Coming to citrus processing units, we have adopted the American technology. HDFC Bank and Pepsico, etc. are our stakeholders. Our office is at Andheri and land is located at Nanded - 200 km away from Hyderabad and Telangana - that is for mosambi. Oranges are sourced from Amaravati and Nagpur.
Has the fall in production rate of oranges in Nagpur affected your company?
In India, the orange production belt is in Madhya Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra and Rajasthan. In Maharashtra we have 1,56,000 hectares under orange production. From this 1,00,000 hectare is at Amaravati and Nagpur. Last year because of draught and water shortage, almost 30-50% area fell in production. There are two types of Bahar - Ambia fruit and Mrig. We purchase Ambia fruit in the season starting from first week of October and it continues up to mid/end December. It is true that production this year fell by 40-50%. But that doesn’t affect us because our requirement is just 10-20 thousand metric tons for this season and for Mrig season which is in Feb, March and April, we need about 10-15 thousand metric tons.
Overall availability has dropped but it hasn't affected us.
Talking about citrus, traditionally some traders do forward trading from June-July-Aug if the fruit is available in Oct because they start harvesting from Oct. That is the kind of harvesting system we have here.
Instead of that, it would be nice if farmers come forward and harvest themselves. They should harvest their own fruit, be able to categorize them as per grades, send the premium grades to traders and send us the rest of their fruit. That way they can make more money than the current system.
How do you procure and process pomegranates?
I am not dealing with pomegranates right now as ours is specifically a citrus fruit design plant. It is true that farmers across India growing pomegranates are facing lot of issues. 3-4 years ago, it was almost 300-500 containers that used to get exported to European countries. Right now we cannot export any of it because:
1. Domestic market is comparatively good in terms of the pomegranate
2. A disease caused 1000s or production areas to get uprooted.
3. We have only one variety and so we cannot compete with many countries in the world like Israel and Spain where season is also same as ours. Also our biggest fruit is their smallest fruit. We cannot compete with the prices that they offer too. Moreover, because of the different kind of weather conditions we are unable to produce quality pomegranates. This is why pomegranates export dropped tremendously.
Is it possible to import the seeds from Spain or Israel and grow it here - has this been attempted?
Talking about import of seedlings or seeds, there is a nursery at Nasik named Sahayadri which is promoted by a friend of mine, who exports largely to Europe and other countries across the world. He has huge capacity processing units for tomatoes, mangoes, pomegranates etc.
He tried importing some varieties from Spain which is the country that hosts big nurseries. When he expressed his interest in importing foreign varieties of fruits, the main hurdle was the system we have in place here. It took almost 3-4 years for him to complete all these procedures and he was successful last year. We need to improve our systems' procedures to get into such kind of transactions.
What is the commercial rate of the C and D varieties of Mosambis?
Frankly speaking there is no commercial rate as such. We are specific that the fruit size should be between 45-75mm. Since that size gets rejected in the regular market, our purchase provides additional income for them. Last year we procured 4000 metric tonnes from Andhra and Telangana at the rate of Rs 13/- per kg.
If a farmer wants to supply fruits directly to companies like yours avoiding traders, how do they go about it?
It would be great if we had farmers who could supply us with raw materials directly because we have the best interest of the farmers in mind. But this is quite difficult for them. We need only C and D grade fruits and farmers are not interested in separating and categorizing fruits. If they do so, things get easy, they can give their premium produce to their place of choice and supply us with the rest.
We are open to purchase the fruits even if the farmers approach us during production time for supplying their fruits.
Do companies such as yours generally procure your raw material directly from farmers?
More or less, it is preferred to source it directly from farmers. But, we need to deal with traders, whom we call service providers, because the difficult part in this business is categorization of the fruits. Things become easy with these service providers because they harvest the fruits, sort them into grades and supply them to different channels.
The new concept of Farmer Produce Organisation (FPO) is a little disappointing. Conceptually it is very good as it is designed to bring all farmers together under a registered company to sell their produce at better rates. Most of these FPOs, however, hardly do anything fruitful owing to lack of experience and other market limitations.
We are currently looking for like-minded partners to scale up and take the project across the country. We have organisations form Arunachal Pradesh (AP) and Madhya Pradesh (MP) approaching us. I want to work for the potters of UP. I would like to see a paradigm shift in the attitudes so as to protect our heritage, richness, culture and food.
We aspire to connect the emotionally bankrupt urban segment to financially bankrupt rural segment.
What are your thoughts on whether the APMC Act needs to be changed?
There is a need to revise the Act – yes!
Having said that, we shouldn't let an Act weigh us down. There are many options that we can explore, in my opinion. There are many ways of marketing a produce. There are many growers across Maharashtra who have developed their own market for their fruits. When we come to the private market, we see a lot of them failing.
Changing of an Act is one thing and exploring options and putting in efforts to market our produce is another. We should not be dependant only on the APMC act. Develop our own market and pave our own path – that is my line of thought.
Anything else before we wind up, Mr Sanjay?
India is trending towards fruit juices and moving away from aerated drinks. There is a huge dip in aerated drinks’ sales and people are showing interest in fruit juices. Within 5-10 years we will have a big market in India for juices, if we trend in the same manner.
So, work wisely and think positively!
Contact :
Sanjay Suryawanshi
C-602, Parksyde residences,
Wadala – Pathardi road,
Near Guru Gobind public school
Indira nagar, Nashik 422009
Sanjay.suryawanshi@citrus-ind.com
Mr Sanjay began his stint with the agricultural sector through a pesticide company in 1999. He now works at Citrus Processing Pvt Ltd. based at Nanded, Maharashtra. As the name suggests, they process citrus fruits like mosambi and oranges.
Are the fruits that companies like yours procure, organic?
From India, grapes is one of the leading export fruits. India exports grapes in huge quantities to Europe. There are different kinds of certifications to be catered to. So use of pesticides and other such inputs should be used with caution. All these things are organized and established in the production belt in Maharashtra especially in the Nasik-Sangli districts.
Before joining with the citrus processing sector, for almost 15-16 years I was associated with the grapes export field. I am aware that in this sector we compete with Chile and many South African countries. Last year we supplied more than 10,000 containers to the European market and all countries put together, we supply grapes to about 20,000 containers globally, in terms of volume. Hence, we have the European market in hand and we are working towards capturing the Russian, Far East markets like Malaysia, Thailand, etc. We have our presence in Bangladesh and Arab countries too. In the last 3 years, we have begun exporting to Canada and have penetrated into the American market as well.
Also, growers in the fruit category are highly aware of these requisites. In my opinion, organic is quite a false term. We need residue-free fruits and vegetables that is safe for human consumption.
Growers use many pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers, during farming but in permissible limits. They are aware of the PHI (Post Harvesting Interval). That way we won't have any problem with respect to residue. We export 20-30% quantity to Germany, which is a very health-conscious market.
Talking about the citrus belt, we deal with Nagpur mandarin and mosambi. The mosambi production belt is in Andhra Pradesh, Telgana and in Maharashtra-Aurangabad belt. We source C and D grade fruits, also termed as industrial grade fruits, for processing and we make frozen concentrate orange and mosambi juices. Our customers are Coca Cola, Pepsico, Dabur and Hindustan Unilever and even Johnson and Johnson because we deal with residue-free products.
Citrus fruits are 7-8 months crop. The fruits contain almost nil content of pesticides and fungicide residue. There is not much use of pesticides etc. compared to the grape and pomegranate category. Nevertheless we have taken an Indian certification which is not necessary for our customer but for public awareness. Also, we keep the dialogues open with our growers so that the pesticides, etc. that they use are kept within specified limits.
What is your monetary deal with farmers?
We pay farmers within 5 days of receiving the fruits at our factory. There are of two types of industrial grade fruits. One is the kind seen in Brazil, China, America - these are the top 3 countries and we are the fourth in the list of citrus fruits producing countries. Brazil exports mandarin category juices worldwide. They have adopted mechanical farming and so, we cannot compete with their model of operations. Hence our produce costs more than theirs. Also, owing to the fact that we operate manually, our production is less compared to theirs.
We are the first and the only citrus fruit juice producer company from India. We pay farmers and the middle men. When I say middle men, I mean our service provider who coordinates with farmers, segregate fruits as per grades, send premium grade products to markets like Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangladesh etc. They also ensure that the industrial grade fruits reaches us.
What is the cost involved in establishing a similar processing centre?
These C and D grade fruits have no value in the market, anyway. If these grade fruits are sent to any market, they don't even fetch you the value enough to cover for the transportation. Since the last 3-4 years, we have purchased almost 15,000 metric tons of oranges from Nagpur and Amaravati areas and we pay the farmers almost Rs 25 crores. As per the market, the value of the fruit wasn't more than 5 crores. We added 20 crores into the market for the same grade of fruit.
Coming to citrus processing units, we have adopted the American technology. HDFC Bank and Pepsico, etc. are our stakeholders. Our office is at Andheri and land is located at Nanded - 200 km away from Hyderabad and Telangana - that is for mosambi. Oranges are sourced from Amaravati and Nagpur.
Has the fall in production rate of oranges in Nagpur affected your company?
In India, the orange production belt is in Madhya Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra and Rajasthan. In Maharashtra we have 1,56,000 hectares under orange production. From this 1,00,000 hectare is at Amaravati and Nagpur. Last year because of draught and water shortage, almost 30-50% area fell in production. There are two types of Bahar - Ambia fruit and Mrig. We purchase Ambia fruit in the season starting from first week of October and it continues up to mid/end December. It is true that production this year fell by 40-50%. But that doesn’t affect us because our requirement is just 10-20 thousand metric tons for this season and for Mrig season which is in Feb, March and April, we need about 10-15 thousand metric tons.
Overall availability has dropped but it hasn't affected us.
Talking about citrus, traditionally some traders do forward trading from June-July-Aug if the fruit is available in Oct because they start harvesting from Oct. That is the kind of harvesting system we have here.
Instead of that, it would be nice if farmers come forward and harvest themselves. They should harvest their own fruit, be able to categorize them as per grades, send the premium grades to traders and send us the rest of their fruit. That way they can make more money than the current system.
How do you procure and process pomegranates?
I am not dealing with pomegranates right now as ours is specifically a citrus fruit design plant. It is true that farmers across India growing pomegranates are facing lot of issues. 3-4 years ago, it was almost 300-500 containers that used to get exported to European countries. Right now we cannot export any of it because:
1. Domestic market is comparatively good in terms of the pomegranate
2. A disease caused 1000s or production areas to get uprooted.
3. We have only one variety and so we cannot compete with many countries in the world like Israel and Spain where season is also same as ours. Also our biggest fruit is their smallest fruit. We cannot compete with the prices that they offer too. Moreover, because of the different kind of weather conditions we are unable to produce quality pomegranates. This is why pomegranates export dropped tremendously.
Is it possible to import the seeds from Spain or Israel and grow it here - has this been attempted?
Talking about import of seedlings or seeds, there is a nursery at Nasik named Sahayadri which is promoted by a friend of mine, who exports largely to Europe and other countries across the world. He has huge capacity processing units for tomatoes, mangoes, pomegranates etc.
He tried importing some varieties from Spain which is the country that hosts big nurseries. When he expressed his interest in importing foreign varieties of fruits, the main hurdle was the system we have in place here. It took almost 3-4 years for him to complete all these procedures and he was successful last year. We need to improve our systems' procedures to get into such kind of transactions.
What is the commercial rate of the C and D varieties of Mosambis?
Frankly speaking there is no commercial rate as such. We are specific that the fruit size should be between 45-75mm. Since that size gets rejected in the regular market, our purchase provides additional income for them. Last year we procured 4000 metric tonnes from Andhra and Telangana at the rate of Rs 13/- per kg.
If a farmer wants to supply fruits directly to companies like yours avoiding traders, how do they go about it?
It would be great if we had farmers who could supply us with raw materials directly because we have the best interest of the farmers in mind. But this is quite difficult for them. We need only C and D grade fruits and farmers are not interested in separating and categorizing fruits. If they do so, things get easy, they can give their premium produce to their place of choice and supply us with the rest.
We are open to purchase the fruits even if the farmers approach us during production time for supplying their fruits.
Do companies such as yours generally procure your raw material directly from farmers?
More or less, it is preferred to source it directly from farmers. But, we need to deal with traders, whom we call service providers, because the difficult part in this business is categorization of the fruits. Things become easy with these service providers because they harvest the fruits, sort them into grades and supply them to different channels.
The new concept of Farmer Produce Organisation (FPO) is a little disappointing. Conceptually it is very good as it is designed to bring all farmers together under a registered company to sell their produce at better rates. Most of these FPOs, however, hardly do anything fruitful owing to lack of experience and other market limitations.
We are currently looking for like-minded partners to scale up and take the project across the country. We have organisations form Arunachal Pradesh (AP) and Madhya Pradesh (MP) approaching us. I want to work for the potters of UP. I would like to see a paradigm shift in the attitudes so as to protect our heritage, richness, culture and food.
We aspire to connect the emotionally bankrupt urban segment to financially bankrupt rural segment.
What are your thoughts on whether the APMC Act needs to be changed?
There is a need to revise the Act – yes!
Having said that, we shouldn't let an Act weigh us down. There are many options that we can explore, in my opinion. There are many ways of marketing a produce. There are many growers across Maharashtra who have developed their own market for their fruits. When we come to the private market, we see a lot of them failing.
Changing of an Act is one thing and exploring options and putting in efforts to market our produce is another. We should not be dependant only on the APMC act. Develop our own market and pave our own path – that is my line of thought.
Anything else before we wind up, Mr Sanjay?
India is trending towards fruit juices and moving away from aerated drinks. There is a huge dip in aerated drinks’ sales and people are showing interest in fruit juices. Within 5-10 years we will have a big market in India for juices, if we trend in the same manner.
So, work wisely and think positively!
Contact :
Sanjay Suryawanshi
C-602, Parksyde residences,
Wadala – Pathardi road,
Near Guru Gobind public school
Indira nagar, Nashik 422009
Sanjay.suryawanshi@citrus-ind.com
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