The Mauritius Co-operative Agricultural Federation Ltd (MCAF Ltd) has inaugurated its Seedling Production Unit on 27 February 2020. The Unit was inaugurated by The Hon Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, Prime Minister of the Republic of Mauritius in the presence of the Hon Soomilduth Bholah , Minister of Industrial Development, SMEs and Cooperatives. A high delegation from the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), India comprising of Dr.U.S Awasthi, Managing Director and other three Directors attended the event together with about 400 planters. The main objective of this unit is to provide high quality seedlings treated with only Bio/Organic products to the farming community at a competitive price.
It is also worth to note that the project cost is Rs 4 M and fully owned by the MCAF Ltd. Operations, Management and Marketing is entirely under the management of the Federation. The unit is located in the premises of Maison des Eleveurs, Henrietta to the extent of 60 perches of land.
The seedling unit consist of two sections, a production unit of 130m2 concrete building which include the seeding machine imported from Italy costing around Rs 600,000, two germination rooms and one office. The second section consists of a 600 m2 green house with high roof air vent system. The capacity of the greenhouse can hold up to 108,000 seedlings at one go. The Annual capacity is around 1.3 Million seedlings
In terms of human resource requirements, the Federation has employed one graduate in the field of Agriculture together with two general workers. The innovative part of this project is that the all seedlings will be treated with only bio/organic certified products.
The seedling unit will provide high quality vegetable seedlings (Tomato, Chilli, Eggplant, Lettuce, Cabbage, Beetroot, Pumpkin, etc). The unit will also cater for home garden for instance seedling of fine herbs, flowers and fruit seedlings (papaya and grenadine).
Sales and Marketing will be effected through the 13 sales outlets of the MCAF Ltd with delivery facilities in planter’s fields. The unit will be into operation by end of February 2020.
Once phase one is successful, the green house will be extended to an additional 600 m2 green house with an annual capacity of 2.5M seedlings.
