The head of Sahakar Bharati Jyotindra Mehta visited Campco headquarters in Manglore last week and was impressed by it. Like Amul in milk Campco had made a mark in the field of chocolate not only in India but also aboard.
On social media Mehta wrote “ Visited CAMPCO chocolate factory. And procurement unit of arecanut (Sopari). Manglor. Putter. President of CAMPCO shri Satishchandra accompanied me. Proudly CO operative.
Campco’s arrival on the cooperative scene is no less interesting. In the early 1970’s, a glut in the market caused the price of arecanut to fall sharply and consequently the growers were pushed into misery and hardship. The solution for the crisis was found in the form of ‘CAMPCO.
CAMPCO was formed in 1973 as a saviour of growers. It is a multi state co-operative – a joint venture of the states of Karnataka and Kerala. With the setting up of the chocolate manufacturing factory at Puttur, 50km from Mangalore, the Co-operative has been able to increase local consumption of cocoa based products and export value added semi-finished products.
Soon, it diversified into many products such as Supari, Cocoa, rubber and now pepper.
As most of its grower members also grow rubber, CAMPCO decided to enter rubber procurement in the year 2010-11. And it commenced
pepper procurement at Puttur in December 2016 by signing an MOU with Indian Institute of Spice research Calicut to garbling and packing of Black Pepper.
Besides winning several awards recently the Chief Minister of Karnataka Siddaramaiah bestowed on it the State Export Excellence Award.
However, its profit dipped last year as It could net only a profit of Rs. 19.15 crore in 2015-16 against a net profit of Rs. 40.57 crore in 2014-15.It had a turnover of Rs.1,591 crore during 2015-16 against Rs. 1,547 crore in 2014-15.
