Coir Board Chairman to step down from the post

KOCHI: V S Vijayaraghavan will resign as the Chairman of the Coir Board on Wednesday. The former MP has been heading the Coir Board since 2008. New appointment to the post will be made in a few weeks.Addressing the press conference, V S Vijayaraghavan, said the Coir Board is all set to open three more coir clusters in the country- Maharashtra, Tripura and Haripad in Kerala. There is a proposal to start 23 more clusters in the country including Kannur and Thrissur. The former Chairman also highlighted that the Board was putting in every effort to increase the availability of coir fibre by distributing mobile coir fibre extraction machine to individual coir cultivators, procurement of coir from neighbouring states and encouraging coir clusters.In the past few years the coir industry has made dramatic strides, the former Chairman said.  In the year 2008-09,  export earnings touched Rs 639.97 crores, during 2009-10 Rs 804.05 crores and in 2010-11  Rs 807.07 crores. The export market has grown at an average of 36 percent in the last three years. “We aimed at a target of Rs 1000 crores, but due to various reasons including the scarcity of labour and raw materials, we were not able to achieve it,” he said. Coir Pith and Coir Geotextiles were the forerunners in the growth of the coir industry, he said. The National Institute of Technology and the Airports Authority of India were closely evaluating Coir Pith blocks on table top runways to avert accidents of the kind which took place at Mangalore airport. The process involves filling coir pith blocks along the edges of the runway to provide a cushioning for aircrafts in the event of overshooting the runaway.