In the inaugural speech Mr. Pankaj Aggarwal, Managing Director, Bindlas Duplux Ltd, gave the synopsis of paper industry in Uttar Pradesh & Uttaranchal region. Here are the dialogues.
“The consumption of paper is directly attached to the growth of the economy. With the emergence of economy use of paper has risen tremendously like in packaging, education, documentation etc. In short, paper is associated with our feelings, learning’s and life”.
Giving a picture of the paper industry in this region, he said “Today UP & Uttaranchal has 165 paper machines out of which Muzaffarnagar has 42 paper machines. Calculating the production capacity of this region, if we multiply the average production with 165 paper machines the result comes out to be more than 4 million tons of paper annually. The government statistics says that the paper consumption in India is 9 million tons. But as per our census it is minimum 15 kg per capita”.
Highlighting the prosperity agro based paper industry is bringing in this region, he said “In Muzaffarnagar, due to the paper industry more than 5000 Kolus have been established because the profit margin in selling the bagasse is much more than making jaggery (gud). Generally each kolu is run by 8 people which means that directly 40,000 families are fed by these activities. Further for transporting this bagasse from one place to another another 1000’s of people are being employed for this purpose so the setting up of paper industry is a boon for the development of the villages & the people”.
Further on challenges for the industry in this region, he added “Being situated in North we face lot of limitations such as we are far from the sea shores so the availability of the waste paper is very difficult, wood is not in abundance so there is only one alternate left for us i.e. agro residue. In UP & Uttaranchal there are small and medium size mills so for better economies of scale some joint initiatives have been taken up by us like installation of common treatment plant, common fire fighting vehicles etc”.
