Purti Story, The Untold Part

Business Standard travels to Ground Zero of the Purti episode and tells us what the ELM doesn't want us to know.

The 47-hectare campus houses an integrated plant, which includes a 2,500-tcd sugar plant, a 22-Mw power generation plant, a distillery with a capacity of 45,000 litres per day and an ethanol plant with a capacity of 120,000 litres a day. It also has facilities to produce methane and biofertilisers. “We make something out of everything,” a staffer quips.  Purti has 14 mechanised harvesters imported from Brazil, worth up to Rs 1 crore each. The company sends these harvesters, which can clear up to four acres of cane a day, to farms across the district. 

“The factory has put cash in the hands of our people, some of whom have got into the dairy business. We used to grow soybean, wheat and other crops, and the yields would be worth as low as Rs 15,000 an acre. Today, we get up to Rs 70,000 from cane. Without Purti, it would not have been possible.”

Part 1: Purti changed our lives, say farmers
Part 2: 'We are not the demons we are made out to be'