(A Government of Tamil Nadu Enterprise)

Kagithapuram – 639 136. Karur District

Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited (TNPL) is a Government of Tamil Nadu Enterprise producing Newsprint and Printing & Writing paper at its Mill located at Kagithapuram in Karur District with an installed capacity of 2.45 lakh MT per annum. TNPL is the one most accomplished mills in the World, producing different varieties paper of acceptable quality primarily from Bagasse and pulpwood. At present, TNPL consumes about 10 Lac MT of Bagasse for pulping and thereby conserving the natural forests from deforestation to the extent of about 40,000 acres every year.

TNPL is currently implementing the Mill Development Plan and also taking up the expansion of paper production capacity from 2.45 Lac MT to 4 Lac MT per annum. TNPL, therefore, requires continuous availability of about 4.5 Lac MT of pulpwood per annum. As per the National Forest Policy, 1988, Forest Based Industries should raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirement. Against this backdrop, TNPL has embarked upon development of plantation in the year 2004-05 and launched two plantation schemes namely Farm Forestry and Captive Plantation.

FARM FORESTRY SCHEME:

Under farm forestry scheme, the Company motivates and facilitates the marginal and small farmer to take up pulpwood plantation.  The salient features of the Scheme are supply of quality planting material at subsidized cost, arranging credit facilities for the needy people through banks, providing timely technical advice through a team of qualified professionals and buy back arrangement with minimum support prices or prevailing market rate at the time of felling, whichever is higher, harvesting and transport of pulpwood from the farmer’s field to Factory at company’s cost.

CAPTIVE PLANTATION SCHEME:

In the captive plantation scheme, Captive plantations are raised in the lands belonging to the Company, Government Departments, Educational institutions and in the large land holdings individuals on a revenue sharing basis or on a lease rental basis. The minimum criteria for captive plantation is that the land should be a block of 25 acres & above in single location where as less than 25 acres is also considered only in the case of adjoining lands of existing captive plantation, provided the adjoining areas should be contiguous to the existing plantation. TNPL enters into a MoU with the owners of such lands for raising Captive Plantation and undertaking the responsibility of land development, establishment of plantations, maintenance of plantation and harvesting the pulpwood at TNPL’s expense. The land would be taken either on long term lease spanning over a period of 6 to 30 years lease or on gross revenue sharing basis. In the revenue sharing pattern, if the plantation is raised in a barren land, the produce is shared between TNPL and the landowner on a 70:30 basis and in case of wet lands, the revenue sharing pattern is 60:40. In the case of lease mode, the lease rent for a barren land is Rs.1000/- per acre, whereas for an irrigated land it is Rs.3000/- per acre every year paid to landowner and the entire produce is taken by TNPL.

View of TNPL farm forestry / Captive plantation

In order create pulpwood resource base in Tamil Nadu, 10 Plantation Regional Offices have been established covering the entire State. Through effective extension and implementation plans in the last five years of operation (2004-05 to 2008-09), TNPL has raised plantation in 37556 acres involving 8235 farmers in twenty eight districts in Tamil Nadu under Farm Forestry scheme and 2735 acres under Captive Plantation Scheme.   In all, TNPL has established pulpwood plantations in about 40291 acres (as on 31st March 2009) and is committed to raise plantation in about 15,000 acres every year to reach the target of 1,00,000 acres by the end of the year 2012-13. These two Plantation Schemes have given an opportunity for the Industry to promote, develop and raise green cover in the wastelands. These schemes apart from resourcing pulpwood raw material will also help in improving the environment, maintaining ecological balance, and providing employment opportunities to the rural population.

The year-wise plantation details are given in the table.

CLONAL PROPAGATION AND RESEARCH CENTRE (CPRC)

Raw material supplies from the plantation are based on the quality planting material, which is supplied to the farmer’s field. The seed routed plantation has their inherent disadvantages of low survival, establishment, low productivity and variation in quality. Where as the clonal material produced from selected proven superior trees shows uniformity, good pulping content, high survival, growth rate and higher productivity.  Therefore, TNPL started promoting clonal plantation of higher productivity from the year 2005-06 onwards.

To cater the need of huge planting material to the tune of 15 million plants to cover 15000 acres every year, TNPL established state-of-the-art clonal propagation and research centre (CPRC) to achieve self sufficiency in planting material and production of quality clonal/ seedling plants with a capacity of 15 million plants per annum. The clonal production centre was started with mini clonal hedge garden of 4000 sq.m, mist chamber of 8000 sq.m, 5300 sq.m of hardening chamber and 20000 sq.m of open nursery with updated technological innovations as per international standards. The clonal production center was established at an outlay of about 500 lakhs. This is considered to be a milestone in the plantation activities and assure quality planting material availability throughout the year.

View of TNPL Clonal Propagation and Research Centre (CPRC)