State Govt. to Encourage Fruit Processing Industry: Phadnavis

Mr Devendra Phadnavis, CM, Mr James Quincy, Coca-Cola President and Anil Jain, MD, Jain Irrigation are seen at Sahyadri Guest House

Coca-Cola creates new orange-based beverage

Mumbai :- State Government is keen on making the horticulture sustainable by encouraging the fruit processing industry, Chief Minister Devendra Phadnavis said yesterday. He was speaking after inaugurating the Coca-Cola’s orange-based beverage prepared using orange pulp at the Sahyadri Guest House.

Coca-Cola Company had processed orange juice and produced a new beverage which would definitely give good market price to the orange-grower farmers. The CM also hoped that Coca-Cola would also start using the Alphanso mango juice to take a lead in producing more beverages at this occasion. James Quincy, Coca-Cola’s President and CEO, also said that it is making all-out efforts to offer maximum support price for the orange growers by launching now Minute-Maid Orange beverage after earlier launching Minute-Maid Mosambi. The consumers are also getting a very good quality beverage, he added. Coca-Cola had also increased the mixture of fruit juice from 5% to 10% in it’s product ‘Fanta.’ This had made more market place available to the orange growers. On this occasion, Mr Anil Jain, Managing Director, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd, Mr John Murphy, President, Coca-Cola Asia Pacific Group, Mr Pravinsingh Pardeshi, CM’s Additional Chief Secretary, Mr T. Krishnakumar, President, South-East Asia Region, Coca-Cola India, Mr Arial Finan, President, Executive and Bottling Investments Group, Coca-Cola and many orange growers also were present on this occasion.

Speaking on the occassioin Anil Jain, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd said “Jain Irrigation has brought a new Brazilian sweet orange variety from abroad into Maharashtra and created a new sweet orange after making a lot of R&D. This variety incidentally combines all advantages of both fruits – mosambi and orange. The production of this orange fruit is at least 3 to 4 times more than the conventional orange crop. Company’s food processing plant is situated at Jalgaon and now it is setting up a fruit processing plant at Morshi in Amravati for processing orange and mosambi,”