Andhra Pradesh govt.’s move to help local products earn global brand recognition

As part of its efforts to transform the products made in Andhra Pradesh into recognised global brands, the government has initiated steps to develop Product Perfection Clusters (PPCs) in the Amaravati, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati economic regions and lined up a slew of enabling measures.

The idea behind the PPCs is to elevate local manufacturing to international standards by providing necessary support to industries, especially MSMEs, conforming to quality control standards, creating advanced logistics networks, doing international benchmarking and integrating it into the production cycles.

The government ​will act as a facilitator and infrastructure provider, and enforce quality standards, which are key to entering overseas markets. It has already done logistics mapping that is aimed at making local products price-competitive abroad.

The products that have been identified include those from the agriculture and horticulture sectors, which make substantial contributions to the GSDP.

Funding resources

To make a headway, the government has advised the District Collectors to explore ways to promote the products made in their districts as raw materials for global brands, and help in getting process, product and marketing audits done.

Besides, it has ordered that all funding resources available under a host of schemes like the Raising & Accelerating MSME Performance (RAMP) to be mobilised. More importantly, the government wants to give assistance to the industries in sourcing advanced technologies from various countries.

Now, the products that have been identified across the State are as diverse as gold jewellery ornaments to solid rocket propellants and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) to cashew kernels.

Globally recognised PPCs

The Tenofovir Alafenamide API manufacturing facilities of Hetero Drugs and Laurus Labs situated in the Jawaharlal Nehru Pharma City at Parawada in Anakapalli district, and the 5 star-R32 class inverter AC-plus- compressor manufacturing units of Daikin, LG, Lloyd and Blue Star in Sri City are cited as examples of globally recognised PPCs.

A composite solid rocket propellant-cum-medium calibre ammunition manufacturing facility of Premier Explosives coming up at Sriharikota and ASIP Technologies - APACT Co. Ltd’s semiconductor unit in the making at Tirupati are being showcased as national strategic assets.

The 3,000-plus agri and tobacco leaf processing units in Guntur district and Araku Coffee are highlighted as ‘regional export strengths’ and the Madhavamala wood craft units near Tirupati and the Chimakurthy black galaxy granite units are considered to have tremendous potential for scaling up to global standards.