The corporation will be organising weeklong launch events, The Great North East Sunshine Festivals, at six Delhi malls — Shipra Mall, Centre Stage, DLF Place, Ansal Plaza, Ambience and Sahara. The events, which are being sponsored by North Eastern Council (NEC) and organised with the help of National Skills Foundation of India, will start this month and continue till February 2012.
The first event got under way at the Ghaziabad-based Shipra Mall on Thursday.
It will also set up retail outlets in select malls in the capital to sell select produce of the region.
Neramac managing director S. Bhattacharjee told The Telegraph, “This initiative is aimed at showcasing produce of the Northeast in the cou-ntry’s prime market.”
He said such mall festivals would surely increase visibility of the products and attract customers to the naturally grown organic produce of the region. The Neramac outlets in several malls of the capital would then cater to the anticipated growth in demand throughout the year. “I hope products like kiwis and pineapples will be big hits,” he added.
“People come to malls to buy select products, and this is a wonderful opportunity for us to showcase our products,” he added.
The events and the retail outlets will also showcase North Eastern Handicrafts and Handloom Development Corporation products.
Set up in 1982, Neramac was meant to enable farmers/producers of the Northeast get remunerative prices for their produce and bridge the gap between the farmers and the market.
It intervenes in sourcing, procuring and marketing of different agro-horticultural commodities like pineapples, ginger, banana, chillies, black pepper, cashew nuts and minor forest produces like hill grass.
It also supports farmers with agricultural inputs like seeds and fertilizers, among others and assists farmers producing planting materials under Horticulture Mission schemes by marketing their produces.
It currently has five retail outlets in the region — two in Guwahati and three in Agartala.
Neramac, which notched up a sales turnover of Rs 101.65 crore in 2010-2011 and currently has three food processing plants at different locations, will be starting a four-tonne-per-day cashew-processing unit by next year.