An innovation to ensure quality, fair price in coir industry

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The lack of a scientific mechanism to accurately measure the running, which is a key quality parameter, of various types of coir yarn has been a major issue faced by the state’s coir sector. This has often led to coir weavers’ cooperatives being denied a fair price by the procurement agencies by citing non compliance with the running specifications.

The unfair situation may soon be a thing of the past with scientists of the state government established National Coir Research & Management Institute (NCRMI) coming up with a cost effective digital coir running meter. The instrument accurately tests the runnage (length in metres per kg of coir yarn) thereby bringing transparency in the evaluation process.

Equipped with a pre programmed microcontroller and an optical encoder, the Digital Coir Runnage Meter of NCRMI boasts high accuracy in analysing the runnage of coir yarn. The character LCD mounted on the instrument provides comprehensive information at a glance, allowing the running of coir yarn to be precisely measured in less than a minute.

“The instrument, designed as a tabletop, portable device is user friendly and has low maintenance. Not only during the testing at the procurement phase, the instrument is also helpful in ensuring operational precision at the coir yarn manufacturing level as well,” said Abhishek C, director, of NCRMI.

Since the running testing process is carried out manually at present, there are widespread complaints that the price of the coir yarn is often decided as per the whims and fancies of the officials involved. Coirfed, the apex federation of primary coir cooperatives in the state, has evinced interest in deploying the instrument at its procurement hubs.

“The innovation will help over 450 functional coir cooperative societies across the state to comply with the quality specifications and ensure better prices for the yarn generated by thousands of workers engaged in this sector,” said T K Devakumar, managing director of Coirfed. Along with the digital coir running meter, NCRMI has come up with a few other innovations in the sector which will also be launched by Minister for Industries and Coir P Rajeev, on January 3.

These include CocoAura. a chemical free air freshener made from coco pith, Coconurture an organic potting filler, Tricopith Pro, a product that expedites composting, and road dividers made of coir coco logs Total functional coir societies: 546 Societies producing coir yarn: 459 Fully mechanised coir yarn units: 150 Workers in coir yarn units: 26,000 Production per year: 20,000 tonnes (Source: Directorate of Coir Development).