Agro Food Processing (AFP) Plant would soon be upgraded to prepare concentrates from apple, tomato and guava in addition to their pulp, AFP chairman Ghulam Abbas said on Friday. "We are going to import the machinery to install at this plant and prepare concentrates from fruit," Abbas said while talking to newsmen at the industrial estate area.
He said there was high demand for apple concentrate all over the world and China and Brazil were exporting it at low price to their clients. AFP chairman said that sheds were also being built at the pulp plant at a cost of Rs 5 million for mango storage. "We have also asked Punjab Small Industries (PSIC) to provide more land adjacent to the plant to enhance its storage capacity to 100 truckloads of mango per day."
A rest house to provide lodging facility to foreign or domestic buyers at the plant was also in the process of completion. The farmers would no more need to invest in marketing their products ie pulp or concentrates once the machinery to prepare concentrates is installed and the rest house building is completed, he added.
Built and installed at a cost of Rs 320 million at four acre in Industrial Estate Area (IEM) Multan, the mango pulp plant had so far produced pulp only from mango on commercial basis. However, recent attempts to produce pulp from apple, tomato and guava also yielded successful results. The plant produced 560 ton mango pulp, 80 ton apple pulp, 50 ton tomato pulp and 90 ton guava pulp this year.
A sum of Rs 40 million still remained as unutilised fund from the AFP project and the management has sought approval from Punjab government to utilize this amount for development of the plant. He said, "Currently AFP has drums to store the pulp, however, the management has also sought approval to arrange small tin packs that will help us in efficient marketing of pulp." He expressed the hope that AFP would become country's biggest and most modern pulp and concentrate plant once its upgradation is completed.
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