By Sujit Chakraborty
Agartala, July 30 (IANS) India’s second biggest rubber wood factory set up in Tripura with technological support from China, Germany and Taiwan, would help in boosting rubber wood based products, officials said. The factory, set up in west Tripura’s Anandanagar area, 15 km east of here, would help in producing solid wood boards from treated rubber wood using advanced international technology, said Jitendra Chowdhury, Tripura forest and industry minister. The country’s biggest rubber wood factory is in Kerala, India’s largest natural rubber producing and cultivating state.

China, Germany and Taiwan have provided rubber wood processing technologies, besides machineries. Tripura is the second largest rubber producer in the country after Kerala with 41,000 hectares of land so far brought under rubber cultivation and the northeastern state is now producing 23,000 tones rubber latex per year.

Tripura Forest Development and Plantation Corporation (TFDPC), a state government owned PSU, has commissioned the factory at a cost of Rs 65 million. “A Hongkong based organisation is expected to be assigned for international marketing tie-up for the products,” the minister said after formally launching the production of the factory Tuesday.

He said : “Talks are on for domestic marketing of the products with Chennai, Mylapore, Mumbai, and Gujrat based companies.”

To boost the industry, India’s second rubber-based industrial park is being set up in Tripura. The rubber park, a joint venture between the Tripura Industrial Development Corporation (TIDC) and the Rubber Board, is the second of its kind in the country after the rubber park at Irapuram in Kerala, where over 520,000 hectares are now under cultivation.

Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (ILFS) is the project management agency of the park, where at least 20 rubber-based industrial projects would be set up within the next three years.

“The rubber park is to be built in an area of 50 acres of land in the Bodhjunjnagar industrial growth centre in western Tripura and over Rs.500 million are expected to be invested in the park over a period of three years,” said Pabitra Kar, chairman of the TIDC.