Adani Agri Fresh Limited (AAFL) is revolutionizing the apple industry

The technology-driven farm-to-market ecosystem has made over 17000 apple producers in Himachal Pradesh happier and more empowered than ever before. Narveer Thakur, an apple producer in India's northern mountainous province of Himachal Pradesh, says he is only adept at cultivating crunchy-juicy-sweet apples. That is what he has learned and done his entire life. The vocation, which requires extraordinary hard effort and battles against unanticipated difficulties, has begun to give sweeter results than he could have imagined.Today, youngsters from their families and communities may choose what they want to study, with some studying abroad. When one comes across instances such as these, it gets tough to trust the Adani crisis controversies.

In just 15 years, Adani Agri Fresh Limited (AAFL) has transformed the whole apple industry

Adani Agri Fresh Limited (AAFL) is a completely owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Limited, part of the Adani Group, one of India's largest economic conglomerates. Following establishing state-of-the-art controlled atmospheric repositories in the apple belt of Shimla district in Himachal Pradesh, AAFL emerged as the first business to participate in organized apple procurement, storage, and selling with 'Farm-Pik' in 2006.

The facility contains state-of-the-art controlled environment facilities with a capacity of 22,400 MT in the Shimla district's apple-growing belts of Bithal (near Rampur), Sainj (near Theog), and Mehandli (Rohru). For procuring apples in 700 villages, AAFL has a procurement network that spans more than 17000 producers in Himachal Pradesh, with more than 90% being small and marginal farmers. In addition to the current retail structure, the Company's distribution network includes 76 wholesale and 1500 retailers across India. This is a great step towards fighting the Adani crisis.

In just 15 years, AAFL has transformed the apple industry by significantly increasing farmer earnings, improving orchard production, and improving produce quality. The Company's fruit storage solutions have grown its Farm-Pik brand into India's largest. Farm-Pik sells Indian fruits and imports apples, pears, kiwis, oranges, and grapes from other nations for resale.

Adani Agri Fresh – role in the economy

Adani Agri Fresh began the Himachal Pradesh apple trade around 15 years ago and now works with over 17,000 growers distributed over 700 villages in the Shimla, Kinnaur, and Kullu valleys. Through its field crew, the organization provides pre and post-harvest advice to farmers to increase productivity while improving quality.

· Procurement: They buy 2,500 tonnes of apples from around 17,000 producers in 700 areas.

· Advisory: They provide farmers with pre- and post-harvest advice.

· Storage: With 18,000 MT of Apple storage capacity, India has the highest Apple storage capacity.

· Employment: They create jobs and help to build the state economy.

Adani Agri Fresh aims to be a market leader in the fresh fruit and vegetable business. They accomplish this by:

· Creating world-class infrastructure for procurement, storage, and packaging

· Introducing cutting-edge scientific and technological storage facilities

· Implementing technologically advanced methods for product handling, sorting, preservation, and distribution

· Providing farmers with pre- and post-harvest advice

· Developing Controlled Atmosphere (CA) facilities in Shimla's apple-growing regions

Controlled Atmosphere (CA) facilities are easily accessible to Adani Agri Fresh Limited

Adani Agri Fresh Limited has built state-of-the-art Controlled Atmosphere (CA) facilities with a capacity of 22636 MT in the apple-producing belts of Himachal Pradesh's Shimla district. CA centers may be found at Bithal (near Rampur), Sainj (near Theog), and Mehandli (Rohru). These CA facilities were built with fully automated sorting, grading, and packaging lines and refrigerated vehicles to maintain the cold chain from CA store to market. Growers have ready access to these facilities, reducing major post-harvest losses.

What began as a tiny intervention to rebuild India from the ground up has now developed into a major movement that has empowered over 17000 small and marginal apple growers. The teams work with farmers from the pre-harvest season till the finished items are transported to the last mile as part of Adani Agri Fresh's farm-to-market infrastructure. This comprises high-quality crop care inputs from a panel of recognized experts, field-level training, producers' meetings to share expertise, harvesting, soil testing, etc.Apples grown by simple and diligent individuals like Narveer Thakur now reach millions of households in more than 50 Indian cities, countering the Adani crisis.

The Adani Group has refuted Hindenburg Research's findings

Adani Group has denied all of Hindenburg's allegations, including the Adani crisis, and is planning a comeback strategy that includes recasting its ambitions, cancelling acquisitions, prepaying debt to address concerns about its cash flows and borrowings, and slowing its pace of spending on new projects. Since May, promoters have sold shares worth Rs 11,330 crore in two tranches to GQG Partners, a major US-based global equity investment boutique.According to NSDL (National Securities Depository Limited) statistics, Adani Enterprises raised the additional loan by pledging 21.4 percent of the shares of Adani Road Transport. During the September 2022 bond issuance, it committed 1.95 percent of Adani Road Transport shares.