Our Cocopeat Factory in Peravurani, Tamil Nadu

A great deal of coir sold as manufactured product is traded product — an office placing orders with third-party units, with no control over what actually goes into a container. It is worth asking any supplier directly whether they own the line, and worth asking for photographs.

Our facility is at Ruthrachintamani, Peravurani, in Thanjavur district — one of the densest coconut-growing regions in India. Husk arrives from growers nearby, and everything from extraction to container loading happens on our own site.

Husk receipt and grading. Husk is bought by count rather than by weight, and each intake is recorded by grade and condition. This is what makes yield and quality variation readable later, instead of a mystery nobody can trace.

Fibre extraction and baling. Long fibre is separated and pressed into bales. The remaining pith carries on as cocopeat.

Multi-stage washing and squeezing. Pith is rinsed in stages to bring electrical conductivity down. EC is recorded at each stage, not only at the end, so a variation can be traced to the point it occurred.

Buffering. Calcium treatment where the specification calls for it. Supplied unbuffered as standard.

Covered drying. Drying under cover rather than open sun, which controls moisture at dispatch and reduces the weather dependence that makes many coir suppliers unreliable between monsoon and dry season.

Sieving and blending. Screened to fine, medium and coarse grades, then blended to the ratio a crop and irrigation system require.

Compression and packing. Blocks, bricks, slabs, grow bags and open-top bags, with batch details on each unit.

Quality control laboratory. Testing in-house rather than sending samples away and waiting.

Storage and container loading. Loaded and documented on site against the batches shipped.

We are currently commissioning a substantial expansion: a multi-stage washing line, a buffering facility, covered drying infrastructure, a grow bag production line and an in-house quality control laboratory.

Current output and post-commissioning capacity are available on request, and we will give you the real figure rather than an aspirational one. If you are planning a supply programme around us, ask — and ask what we can ship this month as distinct from what the plant will do once the new line is running. We will answer both separately.

We would rather lose an order than accept one we cannot deliver on time. A missed shipment costs a grower a season and costs us a relationship permanently, and neither is worth a single container of revenue.

Factory questions buyers ask

Our products: Coco grow bags · 5 kg blocks · Coco chips · 600 g bricks · Open-top bags · Coir fibre

Read next: Quality & laboratory · Export markets · Private label & OEM

Visitors are welcome at the facility, and we are happy to send current photographs of the line and of container loading on request. How we test and document each batch is on the quality page.