KOLKATA: Determined to create its own brand for mustard oil, the state Agricultural Marketing department is setting up its own oil production unit at four places in the state. Two of the units are coming up at Mohanpur and Ranaghat in Nadia district, one at Raiganj in North Dinajpur and another at Malda.
"There is often a sense of skepticism among the common people about whether there is any adulteration in the conventional mustard oil available in the market. However, people are convinced about the genuineness of the products available at the Sufal Bangla outlets. So, we have decided to foray into oil production and market the same with our own Sufal Bangla branding,"Biplab Mitra, state Agricultural Marketing minister said. Presently, the mustard oil that is sold from the Sufal Bangla outlets are procured from Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya at Kalyani and from an organic farmer producer company located at Daluabari in Nadia. "The quality of the mustard oil that we sell is very good but we want to augment our production with rising demand," a senior official of Sufal Bangla said.
The minister said the department is planning to utilise the vacant spaces inside the Kisan Mandis for setting up more oil mills. The unique selling point (USP) of the Sufal Bangla is the genuineness of the products and its reasonable pricing.
The minister said his department has already started taking measures to have at least a solitary Sufal Bangla outlet at every district town in the state. Special emphasis has been given in North Bengal.
Construction work for a number of stalls are going on at Balurghat, Cooch Behar, Siliguri, Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong.
Presently, there are 324 Sufal Bangla outlets in the state out of which 324 are mobile and 50 are static. About 65 outlets are run by the department itself while 274 are run by franchise holders.
The highest number of Sufal Bangla outlets is in Kolkata (170) followed by 110 in North 24-Parganas.