Calcutta, April 3: The government has decided to set up a processing unit that will render the state?s agricultural produce ready for the export market.

The Rs 2-crore project in Barasat on the northern outskirts of the city will be funded jointly by the central Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority and the West Bengal State Food Processing Industries along with the state Horticulture Development Corporation. An agreement will be signed at Writers? Buildings tomorrow.

To begin with, the unit will process green chillies, tomatoes, capsicums, lady?s fingers and brinjals for export to the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria.

?The plant, first of its kind in eastern India, will boast of a 344-tonne cold storage facility. Besides, it will meet international standards in sorting, grading and packing. The operations would be automatic and set new benchmarks for export from the east,? said Subrata Bose, deputy manager of the horticulture corporation.

A 10-bigha plot has been acquired along Nilgunj Road where work is expected to begin next month.

Officials said the state had last year sent an assortment of vegetables to the UK and the response was favourable enough to organise larger export and exploration of markets in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria.

The plant would have a vapour-treatment facility. Vegetables for markets where produce treated with pesticides are not accepted will undergo the treatment.

This will be the second project in which the export development authority will work with the state government. The first time, it was involved in setting up a perishable goods cargo handling facility at the Calcutta airport.

?Once the operations start, produce from both North 24-Parganas and Nadia will be handled at the agro-processing unit. Fresh vegetables will be cleaned and then passed through a string of automatic treatments before being branded ?fit for export?,? an official said.

?Global consultants McKinsey has identified Bengal as one of three front-running states in food and agro-processing, and agro-export would be a thrust area for many states in the next few years,? said a senior agriculture official.

In Bengal, agriculture contributes 30 per cent of the state?s domestic product and accounts for about 57 per cent of the workforce.