Virendra Singh Rawat / Lucknow
Uttar Pradesh has ramped up its prospective alcohol distillation capacity by 1.45 billion litres (BL) with 31 greenfield plants in the offing.
These new plants will fetch a total investment of over Rs 5,400 crore, according to UP additional chief secretary, sugar and excise, Sanjay Bhoosreddy.
In fact, 18 of these 31 plants with composite alcohol capacity of 968 million litres (ML) have already started commercial production. The total fresh job creation is pegged at more than 8,000 across the state.
The alcohol and ethanol sector is directly linked with the sugarcane value chain, thus benefitting the agricultural roadmap of increasing the rural income.
Alcohol is used in a slew of industrial products viz. liquor, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.
Meanwhile, the state is promoting microbreweries to boost the hotel and travel sector. A microbrewery is a small brewery, which produces limited quantity of beer for captive consumption, such as hotels and restaurants, especially in tourism hotspots.
The excise department is facilitating new wineries to provide quality and legitimate leisure drinks to the state consumers.
Since, UP is among the major horticultural producers in nutritious crops such as mango, peach etc, the wineries value chain will benefit state farmers, increase rural incomes, create local jobs and catalyse food processing industry.
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