Umred

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Agarbatti

2023

Vijay Pinjarkar, March 28, 2023: The Times of India

Located in Nagpur district and about an hour’s drive from the city in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region lies the town of Umred, which now finds itself on India’s industrial map thanks to the ubiquitous agarbatti. A cluster of 42 micro units have come up at Umred’s Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) complex dedicated to the production of incense sticks. And what’s more, the country’s first ‘agarbatti park’ is entirely managed and run by women. 
Already, big players like ITC and Rangarao & Sons are procuring the entire coated stock of agarbattis manufactured at the Umred MIDC for perfuming, packaging, and branding under their own trademarks. The park, which is to provide direct and indirect emplo yment to at least 1,000 people, will produce 3% of the total output of agarbattis in the country once work on a hightech common facility centre, or CFC, is completed. 
“The project is a boon for me. I was only a housewife before joining the cluster three months ago. My husband is a cobbler and I badly need employment to supplement the family income. I get Rs 200 per day and hope the wages increase with more business coming in,” said Rupali Devgune of Umred. 
Spread over a 26,000 sq. ft area, the CFC will cater to the entire agarbatti value chain right from manufacturing, perfuming, and marketing through the Nagpur Agarbatti Marketing Association (Nama). Annual requirement of raw agarbatti in India is about 2. 2 lakh tonnes. 
 So, how did this park, which has gone on stream and promises to boost the indigenous production of incense sticks in the region, come about? The project was conceptualised by bamboo expert and consultant Pratap Goswami and is supported by the Chief Minister Employment Generation Programme (CMEGP), which is aimed at setting up micro and small enterprises in rural and urban areas to provide employment.

“It was a long-drawn process that started in 2017. Right from explaining the concept and scheme to people and bringing in workers and machines by sanctioning loans, setting the ball rolling was a Herculean task and it has borne fruit after five years,” says Goswami.

Each unit costs Rs 42 lakh of which the stakeholder has invested Rs 4 lakh with the state government granting subsidy of Rs 11 lakh. The remaining Rs 27 lakh came via a bank loan. There are 10 machines and equipment like driers per unit with each providing employment to 10-15 people.

Each unit can manufacture 150 tonnes of raw agar- batti per annum putting the total capacity of the cluster at 6,300 tonnes per annum. Imports from China make up a big chunk of incense sticks sold in India and plans are afoot to be self-dependent once the Rs 8. 5 crore common facility centre (CFC) goes functional.

“The cluster is looking to float its own brand of agarbattis in the domestic as well as international markets in the current year itself. The CFC will also bring down the manufacturing cost of agarbattis by 20%. The cluster already has a centralised premix plant with quality control checks,” said Goswami.

“The CFC would be churning out 900 tonnes of round bamboo sticks for which 9,000 tonnes of bamboo poles are required. The park will be a boon for farmers growing bamboo in the region,” said Ramesh Dumbhre, a bamboo grower from Umred. Goswami adds that there is also a proposal to “procure 9,000 tonnes of bamboo poles from the Forest Rights Act and Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act areas”.

“This shall provide employment to forest dwellers and boost bamboo cultivation in the region. There is a potential to set up at least 10 such parks for bamboo timber as a substitute for wood timber,” added Goswami, who is also an adviser to the Umred cluster.

The CFC has machinery to convert coarse bamboo dust into fine bamboo dust so as to substitute wood dust as a raw material for raw agarbattis. Further, waste bamboo lumps will be converted into bamboo charcoal using state-of-the-art technology with a charcoal kiln being installed for the first time in India.