To come up near Nalagarh, the project will have two components — park & incubator

The Himachal Pradesh Cabinet cleared a Rs 200-crore Biotechnology Park, the first knowledge-based industry, to tap the potential of diverse Himalayan bio-resource for new development technologies.

The project with two components— Biotechnology Park and Biotech Incubator — will be located at Aduwal village near Nalagarh, around 50 kilometre from Chandigarh and close to the Baddi-Barotiwala industrial belt. The Centre has already provided Rs 9 crore for the incubator.

The Department of Environment, Science and Technology, Himachal Pradesh, will soon invite expressions of interest from private investors, who are already in the biotechnology field, to establish their commercial and resource and development ventures with direct linkages to the industry, socio-economic sectors and Himalayan bio-resources available within the state.

UK-based multinational Matt MacDonald Private Limited, which was engaged to prepare the feasibility report for the park and incubator, has submitted its report.

The incubator will also serve the start-up and the medium-scale industrial units in the park. It is important that the incubator and the rest of the park are simultaneously developed.

The primary objective of the proposed park will be to become a premier centre for generating cost-effective technological packages for industries, to establish critical state-of-the-art infrastructure for future biotechnology products, to bring novel products to markets and to speed up economic development through facilitating technology transfer. The park is expected to generate a direct employment for 500 people.

The idea of a biotechnology park was conceived way back in 2002 after the formulation of Biotechnology Policy in 2001. A report was submitted to the Centre to seek funding in 2003. The sanction of Rs 9 crore was received in May 2005.

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