Bhubaneswar: Micro, small and medium enterprises minister Prafulla Samal on Thursday said food processing industries were the largest employment creators and the potential and trained entrepreneurs should focus on producing quality food products to compete with existing brands.

He said this while launching the Institute of Entrepreneurship Development (IED) Foods trademark here.

Samal praised the IED initiatives in creating a batch of food-processing entrepreneurs in its livelihood business incubator.

An attempt has been made by the state-run IED, Odisha to market the food products produced by the entrepreneurs trained in the incubator located at Mancheswar Industrial Estate.

The food products would carry the trademark IED Foods. It also intends to market the food products produced by it in the incubator under the brand name IED Foods.

"The IED would also encourages incubatees to sell their products under their brand name and strict supervision of quality by incubator's food technologist till they set up their own units," said the minister.

The incubatees and the trainees of IED have produced varieties of products such as mixed fruit jam, jelly, mango juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, pickles, chowmin, snacks (such as gaja, namkeen), atta, besan, soya milk and soya tofu, which were launched by the minister.

IED chief executive officer Samarendra Sahu praised the staff members of IED Odisha for their untiring efforts for getting the trademark registered and preparing ground for the launch of food products under IED Foods trademark.