The second Ayurveda industry cluster namely Maharashtra Ayurved Centre Pvt Ltd. (MAC) under the Centre's Ayush scheme will come at Kolewadi of Pune district shortly. The work on the first Ayurveda cluster in the state known as Konkan Cluster at Sangmeshwar Taluka is almost completed and is scheduled to be operational anytime now.
Scheduled to open by the second week of October 2013, Pune cluster will house a Ayurvedic cafe for the development of Ayurveda cuisine, a dedicated raw material processing centre for supply of standardized, graded, certified and processed raw materials in bulk to the ayurvedic manufacturers.
The procurement of the raw materials will be done by the cluster from the farmers growing herbal and medicinal plants across the country by setting up backward linkages. The project is costing Rs.15.82 crores of which Rs.9.49 crore has been sanctioned as Ayush grant from the Central Government and remaining Rs.6.33 crore as contribution from the shareholders who are part of the cluster.
Spanning an area of 45,000 square feet built up facility, the cluster will have a common facility centre on 120,000 square feet land at Kolewadi with its corporate office at Pune. The project is also estimated to give employment to 108 people directly and 1000 people indirectly.
"The cluster has given us an opportunity to develop a 360 degree horizontal model to propagate concepts and principles of Ayurveda to the farmers, traders, doctors, researchers, pharmacists and other stakeholders through interventions like exhibition, new drug and process design for mass production, contract manufacturing, raw material processing and sale, quality control lab and entrepreneurship development centre.
“MAC Pune will be launching two certificate courses of one year duration one of which would be on raw material identification, grading and standardisation and the other on Ayurveda production techniques respectively approved by Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Nashik at MAC Pune from July 2014 to bridge the gap between industry and education sector for generating skilled work force,” Dr Sunita Belgamwar, chairperson of MAC explained.
The project would bring about quality improvement of raw material and finished goods, reduction in the individual capital investment through contract manufacturing, reduction in the pre manufacturing time (40 per cent time saving) by virtue of bulk raw material supply, reduction in the packaging and labeling costs through a common facility centre, reduction in marketing costs by common marketing and branding (40 per cent cost saving), development of new drugs, process design and validation to compete globally, IPR protection and assistance in R&D and global exposure through common exhibitions.
It is also envisaged to establish EU/ USA FDA approved manufacturing facilities in three years, setting up advanced teaching institutes, create exclusive exports division in five years, establish 15 exclusive herbal and Ayurveda products distribution centres (Ayurways stores) by 2015 across Maharashtra.