Jharkhand is India's largest lac producer, yet farmers around Ranchi mostly sell it raw at weekly markets. A local unit that cleans it into seedlac and melts it into shellac can sell to polish, coating and export buyers.
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This unit buys raw lac (sticklac, the resin scraped from the twigs of host trees) and cleans it into seedlac by crushing, sieving, washing and drying. Seedlac can be sold as is, or melted and stretched into flakes of shellac. Shellac is used in wood polish and varnish, as a shiny coating on fruit, sweets and tablets, and in bangles and crafts.
Jharkhand is India's largest lac producer, and Ranchi district grows it on palash, kusum and ber trees. The national research institute for lac and other natural resins is at Namkum in Ranchi. NABARD's credit plan for Ranchi names lac production and processing as a tribal income activity with room to scale. Yet farmers mostly sell raw lac at weekly markets, and much of the processing happens across the border in West Bengal.
You need a shed with water supply and drainage, crushers, washing tanks, drying floors, a factory licence, and pollution board consent for the wash water. The hard part is price and supply. Lac output and prices swing sharply from year to year with weather and pests, and you must buy stock with cash at harvest.
Your buyers are shellac makers, varnish and polish firms, suppliers of food and tablet coatings, and exporters. Ask the Namkum institute about training and quality testing, and show buyers the results.
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