In spite of this production status, India hardly process a little over 1% of its produces in the food processing industry – compared to 70% in Brazil, 60 to 70% in USA, 83% in Malayasia and 78% in Phillipines.

Scenario of Food Processing Industries in India may be depicts as follows :

Installed Capacity : 1600 lak Tonne per Annum as on Dec 1995.

Total no. of GPO units : Around 4600.

Total investment : Around 300 crores.

Export Market : 55%

Domestic Market : 45%

Exports of processed fruits and vegetables has been steadily increasing both in terms of quantity as well as value. In quantitative terms the exports has increased more than 60% over 1990. In terms of value, the increase was about 70% over 1990-91.

West Bengal is no exception to production of horticultural produces in India. Potato, Tomato, Cabbage are produced in abundance in West Bengal. Mango of West Bengal variety is world class both in quality and quantity. The production has been doubled in comparison to that of a decade back. Such silent revolution in production has opened up a new vista and enormous scope in the field of preservation and processing of horticultural produces in the state.

On present reckoning, there are about 280 licensed fruits and vegetable processing units which also includes small scale enterprises in the state of West Bengal. The installed capacity of these units in 1995-96 was 59742.50 MT, production 23897.7 and capacity utilisation around 40%. The product mix of this sector includes Jam/Jelly, marmalade, tomato ketchup and purse, squash, pineapple, mango slices, green chilly pickles and sauce, karamcha, cashew-nuts, various pickles and some amount of processed vegetables like mushroom, Cabbage, Cauliflower, potato, bamboo shoot etc. Total annual sales turnover of this industry in the state of West bengal worked out to be Rs. 4454 in lakkhs for the year 1995-96.

The Govt. of West Bengal has a separate ministry in Food Processing and horticulture who are ready to approve projects and extend co-operation in setting up of industries with a new look.

This department alongwith Agricultural Marketing Department, Directorate of Technical Education Government of West Bengal has come forward to train up technical hands required for he industry. Some Non-governmental efforts have also been made on behalf of some NGOs to open some training cum production centres in the state. Forum of scientists, Engineers and technologists (FOSET) one of the leading NGOs in the state, in order to implement their technology transfer programme in the rural areas has set up few replicable model plants in the rural areas of West Bengal. R & D Centres and product Development centres have also been established and working successfully.

There is enough scope o be involved in he food processing industry in West Bengal which is faced with the difficulties of presentation of food products such as onions, potato, ginger, spices, chillers, turmeric etc. There is scope of good investment in this field of infrastructure like building up cold storages, development of low cost packaging machineries, innovative and aggressive marketing system etc.