HANDMADE PAPER PROJECT FOR BANANA FIBRE

HANDMADE PAPER UNIT BASED ON BANANA FIBRE

The Handmade paper Industry has become more popular because of its eco-friendly nature and has a significant impact for growing forest and preserving the greenery. The water and air pollution is also negligible. The export of handmade paper is increased in multiples with the growing awareness in developed and developing countries. In recent years handful number of handmade paper manufacturer become major export oriented units. These units are exporting handmade paper & its products to several countries. The demand of handmade paper is increasing day by day in domestic as well as in international market.

Several varieties of Banana are cultivated in the country. The plants are cut down as soon as fruits are harvested for extraction of fibre. Banana fibre has great potentialities for paper making because of its high alpha-cellulose and low lignin content.

Banana fiber is a multiple celled structure. The lumens are large in relation to the wall thickness.Cross markings are rare and fiber tips pointed and flat, ribbon like individual fiber diameter range from 14 to 50 microns and the length from 0.25 cm to 1.3 cm, showing the large oval to round lumen. Banana fiber is a natural fiber with high strength, which can be blended easily with cotton fiber or other synthetic fibers to produce blended fabric & textiles. It is mainly used by cottage industry in Southern India at present. Banana Fiber also finds use in high quality security/ currency paper, packing cloth for agriculture produce, ships towing ropes, wet drilling cables etc.

Banana fiber is the best natural fiber. It has its own physical and chemical characteristics and many other properties that make it a fine quality fiber.

• Appearance of banana fiber is similar to that of bamboo fiber and ramie fiber, but its fineness and spin ability is better than the two.

• The chemical composition of banana fiber is cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.

• It is highly strong fiber.

• It has smaller elongation.

• It has somewhat shiny appearance depending upon the extraction & spinning process.

• It is light weight.

• It has strong moisture absorption quality. It absorbs as well as releases moisture very fast.

• It is bio- degradable and has no negative effect on environment and thus can be categorized as eco-friendly fiber.

• Its average fineness is 2400Nm.

• It can be spun through almost all the methods of spinning including ring spinning, open-end spinning, best fiber spinning, and semi-worsted spinning among others.

Process of Manufacture:

• Banana fiber soaked around 1 day(20-24 hrs) into the water.
• The extracted banana fibre cooked with mild alkali (8% NaOH) around 2 hours and Bleaching done through O2 diglinification+hypochlorite bleaching.
• Cooked  through chemical (.05% EDTA+8% NaOH+2% H2O2)  around 4 hours and washed fibre converted into pulp with help of mechanized beater.
• A sheet of pulp is formed over mould by hand then wet paper sheet couched onto a cloth which acts as a interleaf separating the wet sheets.
• A pile of the wet sheets then pressed and excesses water is removed from the wet sheets.
• The pressed sheets are peeled and separated from the cloth and loft dried on Taosuki 0r natural drying.
• The dried sheets are calendared for smoothness and then cut into a required.

Project Cost (Annually) :

Fixed Cost-

Work shed 1000 Sq ft.                                                            - Rs. 2.0 Lacs

Equipment                                                                              - Rs.  10.0 Lacs                                     

(Fiber Cutter , Paper-making Vats, Rotary Digested, Steam Boiler Non

IBR, Beater (18"x24"), Taoshuki. Paper cutting Machine)

Total Fixed Expenditure                                                            - Rs.  12.0 Lacs                                             

Working Capital                                                                      - Rs.  5.0 Lacs

Total Project Cost                                                                    - Rs. 17.0 Lacs

Total  Production (Handmade Paper)                                        -Rs 30.0 Lacs

Net Profit                                                                                 -Rs 13.0 Lacs                                  

Salary and Wages                                                                    -Rs 7.0 Lacs

Raw Material                                                                              -Rs 20.0 lacs

Labels and Packing & Transportation                                       - Rs.  1.0 Lacs

General & Administrative Expenses                                          -Rs  1.0 Lacs

Variable Cost                                                                            - Rs 29.0 Lacs

Requirement of WC per Cycle                                                   - Rs  5.0 Lacs

Note: Cost varied location and size of project and Variety of banana fiber used.