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December 20, 2011

GMark with the patronage of Katalyst recently augments a hand in Packaging Service Market Development to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh, particularly aiming the poor farmers of four different sectors, namely, vegetables, fish, fruits and flowers sectors. Started off with its scoping phase held in February 2009 and then an in-depth study in September 2009 followed by fifteen-months long pilot-phase activities, GMark successfully carries out that farmers of aforesaid sectors can significantly be benefitted by facilitating usage of Improved Bamboo Baskets (IBBs), Plastic Crate (PC), Leno Mesh Bags, Low Density Ploy Ethylene (PDPE) etc. and thereby reducing post-harvest wastage & transportation cost.

After the breakthrough upshots of Pilot Phase dated from February 2010 to May 2011 conducted in 11 districts, GMark now sets off a Scale-up Phase to spread out its improved packaging techniques over 29 districts across Bangladesh. Such improvement in packaging system ranges from post-harvest to pre-harvest period. Through an extensive and intense series of activities, GMark expects to have roughly 131,700 farmers accessed by the end of 2012. Most importantly, in the preceding days of the project, what GMark aims to ensure is sustainability of such activities through market mechanism which in turn can guarantee an overall market change in packaging service market of agro products and thus a continuous betterment of agro farmers.

Lining up the inception, GMark has already established a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bengal Polymer Ware Ltd. (BPWL) and oral contract with 50 distinct bamboo basket wholesalers whereas GMark will be playing the role of a facilitator along the entire project.