Reported end date passed· Health· Livelihoods

Increase production efficiency of tea factory and strengthen marketing strategy

Prithvinagar Small Farmer Agriculture Cooperative (PSFAC) is located approximately 10 km South of Bhadrapur close to the border with India. It focuses on the processing and marketing of tea produced by the members. Besides tea processing and marketing the cooperative is also involved in the business of savings and credit services to its members.The cooperative was established in 1995 in response to promote the production of tea by smallholder farmers as the land in the area is very suitable for tea production. The cooperative started with only 25 members and 1250 NPR shared capital. Now the cooperative has 2146 members and shared capital of 18.9 million NPR. Until 1999 the cooperative only collected tea leaves from its members and sold it unprocessed to a private tea factory. However the prices offered by this factory where relatively low and there was no timely payment. Therefore the cooperative created in 2009 the ambition to invest in its own processing factory. The large tea factory was built with government funding support. Total investment was 80 million NPR of which 30 million government grant 20 million loan SKBB (5% interest) and 30 million share capital of the members. Tea processing is new for PSFAC. So far the business has not created significant profit (0 in the 2016-17 fiscal year). PSFAC believes it can increase profit if it can optimize the efficiency of the factory and strengthen its capacity in marketing of the processed tea. By the end of 2018 through the collaboration with Agriterra the cooperative strives to have its profitability of the tea factory increased with 5%.

Source-reported status: completed. Timeline labels use reported dates and do not verify current activity.