Remei supply chain: In the midst of the COVID crisis in India and at the beginning of a good organic cotton harvest in Tanzania.
The health situation in India related to the COVID-19 pandemic continues to deteriorate. Corona has now reached rural areas in India. There, local hospitals lack oxygen facilities, intensive care beds and medicines. The biggest problem is that for most people there are no diagnostic and treatment facilities at all.
Remei’s subsidiary, bioRe India Ltd is located in the central Indian state of Madhyapradesh and operates in the districts of Khargone and Barwani. This region is severely affected by COVID-19 as it borders the state of Maharashtra, which has the highest COVID-19 numbers in India. The entire region has been in lockdown for the last three weeks. Unfortunately, bioRe India staff and organic cotton farmers are also severely affected by the current COVID-19 crisis.
bioRe India immediately set up home office structures for employees and established a fund of USD 20,000. Employees of bioRe India can take advantage of interest-free loans from this fund in the event of urgent health problems or a corona infection. In addition, bioRe India has taken out health insurance for employees and their family members. Despite the lockdown, bioRe India is in the process of procuring seeds and distributing them to the farmers in order to provide GMO-free seeds to the farmers this year as well.
Industrial production in Tirupur, South India is still running at reduced capacity, but stable so far. Ensuring the health and safety of workers and employees remains a top priority, and the installed hygiene measures and safety precautions are maintained at the production partners. Vaccinations are made possible.
The stable relationships with our trading and production partners are once again enormously valuable to us in the current situation. Special thanks go to our trading partners who decided at short notice to financially support the organic cotton farmers in rural Kasrawad who have been severely affected by the crisis.
The bioRe Foundation has set up an emergency fundraising campaign for this purpose,which is also financially supported by Remei.
The harvest season in Tanzania has begun
We are happy to share positive news from Tanzania. The harvest of the early sown organic cotton has started in Tanzania! The cotton has ripened magnificently under good weather conditions and without pest infestation.
As in March, we visited the organic cotton farmer Elias Lugedenga again. He has been working with bioRe Tanzania for 16 years and, as a long-time experienced organic farmer, has planted a total of 16 hectares with organic cotton this season.
“This year is a good season for me, as there was only moderate rain and hardly any pests,” Elias Lugedenga reports. He estimates his yield at 12,000 kg of raw cotton, which is about 750 kg per hectare. Elias continues: “The quality of the cotton is very good this season: clear and white. I will carefully train my harvesters to work carefully when picking to maintain the good quality of the cotton. I am very satisfied with the services bioRe Tanzania provides from sowing to harvesting, especially I appreciate the advice at every stage of cotton production.”
bioRe Tanzania is at the beginning of Remei’s Fibre to Fashion supply chain and works with 1,952 organic cotton farmers in the Meatu District in Tanzania.
