Plastics Centre to come up in Vijayawada.

Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh will have a Rs. 50 crore facility to give a fillip to plastics. It will be developed by the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering & Technology (CIPET).

The Centre and State Governments will share the costs equally. The AP Government has allotted 12.04 acres at Surampalli village of Gannavaram mandal for the facility. It is expected to help plastics industry in Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Rajahmundry, Guntur and Renigunta in the State.

The Union Minister for Chemicals & Fertilisers Ananth Kumar and Chief Minister, N Chandrababu Naidu will lay the foundation stone for the facility on Friday. Union Ministers, M Venkaiah Naidu, P Ashok Gajapati Raju, Hansraj Gangaram Ahir and others will be present at the event.

Cipet had launched its training activities since August 2015 at the premises of the Vijayawada Auto Cluster Development Company, Kanuru near Vijayawada. It is offering specialised and practical oriented courses in plastics engineering & technology in line with the industry requirements.

So far, 675 students have been trained through various skill development programmes and many have been employed in plastics and allied industries. Plans are to train around 14,500 students in the next three years.

CIPET, which is under the Department of Chemicals & Fertilisers has operations from 28 locations in the country. It offers diploma, post graduate, doctoral programmes in the entire gamut of plastics engineering and technology. In addition, Cipet runs two R&D centres and offers technology support services in all key sectors of the economy.

As per industry estimates, there are about 1.18 million direct technical manpower employed in plastics processing industries and a protected 1.16 million more are required by 2023-24. During 2015-16, Cipet has trained 63,020 people through its training programmes and has set a target of achieving 6.2 lakh by end of 2022.

HBL