Bamboo in Orissa: Trade and Livelihood Perspective - Vasundhara

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Paper mill
Requirement in ton
Straw Products Ltd.(JK Paper) 117600
Orient Paper Mill 182400
TP Mills(Chowdwar) 48000
SEWA (Jeypore) 80000
(Source:OFDC)
Estimation by OFDC in 1997-98 suggested the requirement of raw materials in the four
units as under:
Paper mill
Requirement in ton
Straw Products Ltd.(JK Paper) 117600
Orient Paper Mill 182400
BILT(Chowdwar) 54950
BILT(SEWA) 58136
(Source: Agenda notes for the meeting of the Emp. Committee for 1997-98 crop)
The estimation furnished in the above table was actually based on the principle that per ton
of paper produced, 2.8 MT of raw material would be required. Accordingly, the
requirement was estimated on the basis of the paper production in individual mills during
1996-97. For instance, JK Crop produced 75984 tons of paper in 1996-97, hence @2.8
times of this figure, its raw material requirement was estimated to be 212755 MT. It may
be noted here that during early '90s, the adopted proportion of raw material to paper was
2.5:1(vide Proceedings of the Emp. Committee meeting on 25.10.94).
However, practically there were several variations to the above estimations. If bamboo is
taken as such, then the proportion of raw material to paper would be 3.67:1. This is for
naturally dry bamboo(salia) having about 20% moisture. This bamboo is machine-dried in
the paper mills to turn into what is known as 'bone-dry'(BD) bamboo; and in the case of
BD bamboo the proportion changes to 2.2:1.
Paper mills used wood since long, but the ratio of bamboo and wood was about 90:10.
Production in Orissa was not sufficient to meet the requirement of the mills. For instance,
for the 1997-98 crop, 2.53 lakh MT of bamboo was proposed to be distributed to the four
paper mills against an estimated raw material requirement of 4.665 MT. The practice
during mid-'90s was that the allocation to individual mills was limited practically to about
50% of their raw material requirement. This kind of shortage over the years, as well as the
price of bamboo forced paper mills to adopt commercially viable technology so that
dependency on bamboo could be reduced to minimum. During '90s the consumption ratio
of bamboo and hardwood changed to 50:50 in some paper mills, and by 2003, it changed to
20:80 in cases like JK Paper. This company had a requirement of 117600 MT of bamboo
and 50400 MT of hardwood in 1989, which increased to 127400 MT and 54600 MT
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