Honey processing, silk cluster: Common facility centres may open next month: SMEDA

Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) has established common facility centres for honey processing & packaging and silk cluster in Mingora (Swat), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Both the projects are near to completion and likely to be inaugurated in next month, sources in SMEDA told Business Recorder, here on Tuesday.
The common facility centre for honey processing and packaging that was completed at a cost of Rs 38.17 million will provide proper honey extracting and processing facilities, honey cleaning and packaging facility to the farmers, traders and exporters at their door step.
The centre will have sophisticated equipment to process apiary as well as forest honey. The centre will also have facility of production of refined high quality honey for bulk consumption, sources added. Currently all the civil work has been completed, machinery, furniture and fixture and IT equipment has been procured and installation is in process at the project site. Moreover, necessary staff has been hired and the remaining hiring is in process. The project will start operation by the end of this month while five training programmes are also being arranged for 142 beneficiaries, sources said.
SMEDA has also developed a common facility centre for silk cluster in Mingora, Swat to improve the quality of silk cloth by provision of dyeing, washing and pressing plant as common facility in the cluster. This centre will also be inaugurated in June 2017.
This centre will support the cluster by providing technical know how to improve product quality while arrangements would be made for demonstration of innovative methods of improved dyeing, washing and pressing for cost reduction, value addition and time saving.
The common facility centre for silk cluster will help develop diversified products in the cluster besides creating market linkages locally and at national level to increase the income of the producers in the cluster.
The centre will provide services of installed machinery for business purposes at nominal charges apart from managing training services to enable washing, dyeing, and pressing capabilities. The sources further said that the project of common facility centre for silk cluster was delayed for two years mainly due to non availability of funds in 2012-13 which were released after two years of approval of the projects. Now, after completion and demonstration effect, the project will be handed over to Swat Silk Association which will be responsible for maintenance and operations in future.