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Innovator of Banana Fiber Peeling Machine: Murugesan |
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| Abstract |
"Banana is a popular crop in Melakkal and nearby villages situated in the Vaigai river basin. Pseudostem of banana after the harvest of the crop used to go waste. Murugesan once attended a meeting at KVK, Madurai
and developed an interest in recycling banana plant waste into an income generating venture.
Since 1998, he has been working on mechanized fiber separating process from pseudostem. He has stabilized it through his persistent efforts over the last 19 years.
Murugesan (50), 8th standard, tills two acres of coconut and banana garden and cultivates an additional four acres on a lease basis with his wife in Melakkal village, Madurai District. . Their daughter recently graduated in computer science.
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"Initial Struggle
Murugesan got several useful suggestion from KVK, Madurai and faculty IIT, Initially, he and his wife Malarkodi were involved in separating the fiber from banana sheath manually and wove 200 meters of (single play quality) rope. The banana rope is used for making products such as handbags, mat, small baskets etc. He was able to sell the banana fiber products but he found it tedious manual task. At one stage in 2002, he was on the verge of stopping it.
Rope making Wheel and Rope making machine
The model of wheel suggested by experts for making the ropes was not at all satisfactory. He made modifications and developed five different models, out of which two models failed. It was in 2016 that he got success in designing the new machine that can make 6 rolls at a time instead of one. The capacity increased to 25,000-meter output with 6 women laborers per day compared to 2500 meters with 5 laborers using a single wheel model.
Fiber Separator
For separating the fiber from banana sheath he designed a manual fiber separator with about 16-20 pointed serrations (2x1.5c.m.). This fiber separator will help a person to separate fiber from 20 bundles compared to the manual method of efficiency at 10 bundles per day. A banana sheath with a width of 3-4’’ is usually separated into 20 fibers.
Malarkodi used a hairdressing comb to increase the efficiency up to 35 bundles. The rope size 1-2 mm thickness can be obtained from the single sheath and a total of 36 ropes obtained as compared to 20 ropes from the earlier method. The new method involves two steps: first split the sheath using fiber separator (using widened serrations) and then using an ordinary comb for further splitting.
Rope Twiner
Rolling the bundles of finished banana ropes was a tiresome and painful for laborers after working for the whole day. A hand-operated twiner was developed that twined the rope bundles systematically and also indicated their length. It saved time and labor and reduced the need for just two laborers. Later he mechanized it with power-operated winder. In 2016, he developed another model allowing other pins to function normally even on-hook or rope breakdown. Initially, all the six laborers had to stop work if there was a breakdown in one hook and it affected the labor productivity. He improved this model winder where 6 rolls can be wound at a time and this is operated with 1 hp motor. The capacity of twiner now is 20,000 meters per day of 8 hours.
Two in One machine for rope making and Twining
In each wheel, six women had to walk a distance of about 10 meters each time covering 20 k.m. per day. Mr. Muthugesan contemplated a roller to twine the rope at the source of the wheel itself so that women could sit and twine the rope without walking. During 2017 he developed an automatic rope making machine where the dual function of rope making and winding could be done avoiding walking and increasing labor productivity three times. He is still working on improving the belt functionaffecting uniform speed of the machine. He hopes that this might be rectified in a few months.
His wife Malarkodi found a method of winding with one end of fiber tied on to the rod. This led to unleashing from inside the bundle and rotate rotation without any dislocation.
Production Capacity
He is getting many orders for his devices. From the initial two laborers, he has increased to 80 over the last nine years. His unit is operating in two shifts. The unit is making 7-10 lakh meters of the rope of single-ply or 5 lakhs meters of two-ply stature per month. He is selling the rope at Rs. 0.60 per meter for single-ply or Rs.1 for the double-ply. His gross income is Rs.6,00,000 and able to get a net income of Rs.1.5 lakhs - per month after accounting electricity, GST, income tax. He has not included the cost of his time and also his wife’s time even though they are fully involve. He is a member of the BIRAC agribusiness incubator with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore and obtained Rs.10 lakhs as a grant for improving his rope making machines. TNAU has added value by testing the optimum moisture content and advising suitable variety of banana for fiber making.
He is the recipient of many awards:
Citi bank Entrepreneur award of Rs
2 lakhs in 2008, Farmer scientist Award by ICAR Rs.5 lakhs in 2010, Tamil Nadu Govt. Handicraft award (Poompuhar) of Rs.50,000 in 2013 and MSME micro-enterprise Award 2016.
P.M. Murugesan, ROPE Production Centre, 3/43, Main Road, Mellakkal Village, Madurai District – 625 234. Tamil Nadu.
Documented by: P.Vivekanandan, SEVA
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee, 31(1-2) ,9-11, 2020 |
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