Paradip port town. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 23: The state government is planning to set up a port-based cluster of wood-based industries in Paradip on the Kandla model. The hub will manufacture wooden products with imported timber and market them within and outside the country.

“The entrepreneurs will set up their units with their own funds. We will facilitate the project by providing land and other infrastructure. The state run Industrial Development Corporation has earmarked 100 acres of land for the purpose,” said industries minister Raghunath Mohanty.

“The beauty of the project is that the wood-based units will use timber imported from South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies. The proposal is on the lines of Kandla project in Gujarat where several wood-based industries are operating. The entire raw material is imported from outside,” said forest and environment minister Debi Prasad Mishra.

Notwithstanding the fact that Gujarat does not have timber forests, Kandla today boasts of India’s biggest timber industry, playing a key role in saving the country’s forests by importing timber from abroad.

State planning board member Sarat Chandra Sahu, who had led a team of entrepreneurs to Kandla and Singapore, said Paradip would be a viable and ideal location for the wood-based industries.

Sahu claimed that chief minister Naveen Patnaik had appreciated the proposed project since it would help saving the state’s forest.

Sahu, an industrialist himself, said several entrepreneurs from Orissa, were keen to set up their units in the proposed industrial estate since it would be cheaper for them to import timber through Paradip port.

The timber traders and wood-based units of Orissa are now importing two lakh cubic metre of timber through Vishakhapatnam and Kandla ports, he said.