IG international in talks with Australian company for a joint venture

KOLKATA: IG international, one the leading fresh fruit companies in the country, is in talks with an Australian company for a possible joint venture to produce high value exotic fruits like avocado, blueberries, dragon fruits in India. This was disclosed by Tarun Arora, director of the company in an interaction with ET.

Talking to ET, Arora said "We were talking to a number of global players. However, we have now zeroed in on an Australian company. The discussions are underway. We hoping to clinch a deal with the company within next two months time." IG international has clocked a Rs 500 crore turnover Rs 500 crore in FY17 and is aiming to take it to Rs 600 crore by end of this fiscal.

Alongside, the company has decided to spend nearly Rs 65 crore for setting up fresh cold storage facilities across India. It already has 14 such facilities in India. "We have just added one more at Mumbai at Khopoli on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. The newest facility will supplement the brand’s existing cold storages facilities in Maharashtra and will cater to IGIPL’s own fresh produce consumption. We will be adding more such cold storages in Kolkata, NCR, Krishnapatnam and Chennai. Once tehse new facilities are in place our capacity will increase from 40,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes."

The new facility at Khopoli, Mumbai was completed in only 120 days, making it one of the fastest constructed cold storages in the country. The Khopoli facility has a capacity of 2000 pallet and is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities such as labour quarters, office area, dockyard and loading/unloading area, and Wi-Fi, as well as efficiently-designed high cube pallet racking.