Chinese mouth freshener company to import Indian Areca nuts

Himanshu Vatsa | The Dollar Business

China is likely to open a new avenue for the export of Indian Areca nuts, which have so far been used in chewing tobacco and pan masala within the country. According to the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd, a Chinese mouth freshener making company is in the process of selecting Areca nuts from Karnataka and Kerala region so as to finalise the best quality of the crop to be used in their mouth fresheners. “A team of experts from Chinese firm Kou Wei Wang visited the arecanut growing region for the second time and shown keen interest in buying processed tender arecanut from here,” said Suresh Bhandary, Managing Director of Campco. The Chinese team is conducting trials and it will finalise the best-suited quality for them in the next two weeks. “They want tender Areca nuts to be boiled and dried before shipped to China where the product will be used as raw material for mouth fresheners. If the deal is finalised, we can expect up to 32,000 quintals of export order per year,” Bhandhary told The Dollar Business. So far, Areca nuts are only sold in domestic markets, mostly in the chewing tobacco industry. The product has caught the attention of a foreign buyer for the first time. The Campco official said that initially, the boiled and dried tender Areca nuts will be sold to China at a price raging from Rs 142 to Rs. 160 per kilogram, which is at par with the domestic wholesale market rates. “However, our trade with China will open more export avenues for arecanut growers in the country in the long run,” Bhandary added. China produces around 1.2 lakh tonnes of Areca nuts every year but the quantity is not enough to meet its domestic requirement. With an average annual production of more than 3 lakh tonnes, India is the largest producer of Areca nuts, followed by Bangladesh, China and Indonesia.      

July 7, 2015 | 4:55 pm IST.