Pune women's group sets up polythene plant

Pune: A group of homemakers, maids, baby-sitters and vegetable vendors, some barely educated, got together to set up a Rs10 million (Dh781,045) polythene manufacturing plant here.

The project - the first in Maharashtra in the women's cooperative sector - was inaugurated on Thursday and has already bagged an export order from Dubai to supply six million plastic bags annually, said an excited Sulabha Ubale, patron of the Swamini Self-Help Groups Federation (SSHGF).

"Shivajirao Patil [MP from Shirur] has also promised to get us orders for half a million bags per month from the sugar cooperatives," Ubale said.

The project to manufacture polythene bags, used mainly by the sugar and cement industries, had a humble beginning with each member of the self-help groups associated with SSHGF contributing Rs100 a month.

"We decided to do something that would provide gainful employment to our members. So we set up a sustainable business entity with long-term growth potential. Polythene bags are in great demand in this region," said Ubale, a Shiv Sena corporator in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) on the outskirts of Pune.

Maharashtra has 10 polythene bag manufacturers in the private sector, but the Swamini self-help group's project is the first that will be exclusively managed by women.

The 156 women members of SSHGF managed to successfully raise Rs2 million.