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Chinese firm back to firm up purchase of tender arecanut for mouth fresheners

Published On : 07 Jul 2015


Mangaluru (TNN): The Dragon eyeing tender areca nut from Karnataka is back for a second visit. After evincing interest to buy this horticultural produced during an earlier visit in May, Kou Wei Wang (meaning King of Taste) in China's Hunan province is holding fresh round talks with The Central Areca nut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd. This time, the Chinese team has arrived to impart training on how they want the tender areca nut processed.

The tender areca nut boiled and slow dried to specifications of the Chinese firm will serve as raw material for Kou Wei Wang back home to prepare mouth freshener which has great demand there. This material will undergo further processing in China and initial export demand is 3,200 tonnes, said Konkodi Padmanabha, president of Campco. " Their mouth freshener prepared from tender areca nut has established its brand in China and stands at number one position," he said.

Suresh Bhandary, managing director of multi-state cooperative Campco said Campco is modifying one of the eight drying ovens at its Puttur unit used to dry cocoa for the purpose of drying boiled tender areca nut. " We hope to get quarter of areca nut quantity so dried as raw material for exports - around 25-kgs for 100-kgs boiled and dried. We are aiming to export 10 tonnes of raw material in a container to Hunan province on a trial basis by the end of this year," he noted.

" The three-member Chinese delegation that is touring Shivamogga visiting areca nut plantations there is trying to help us identify exact quality of tender areca nut they need," Suresh said, adding it is only a matter of harvesting the crop at a specified date from time of flowering. The demand for tender areca nut derived mouth freshener is growing in China. But the domestic production there falls short of demand and hence the Chinese firm is looking at us, he explained.


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