Sydney:
At Wagah Wagah, 450 kilometres from Sydney in Australia, a silent revolution is happening in the vast swathe of canola farms where an Indian has set up one of the world's best oil refineries.
When DD Saxena went to Australia 20 years ago and started experimenting his business model, he was not taken seriously by anyone. But just one year after his plant went operational in 2013, it is being dubbed the biggest Greenfield Indian investment in Australia creating 80 direct jobs, 200 construction jobs and over 500 indirect jobs besides contributing significantly to the local economy.
Riverina Oil And Bio Energy PVT Ltd (ROBE) has overcome all bureaucratic hurdles for developing a 170,000-tonne oilseed crushing and edible refining plant with an investment of 150 million dollars.
"This plant has been built purely with a lot of passion and a lot of commitment. This is the ninth project I am putting up, but building a plant in Australia in my opinion is one of the toughest exercises in the world", says Mr Saxena, Managing Director, Riverina.
What is significant is that 70 percent of the material used for constructing the state-of-the-art plant has been imported from India. Indians are also the biggest engineering resource for the refinery.
"After working for almost 22 years in India, I haven't seen such a world class plant there. Even though people have plants which are 15 to 16 times bigger than this plant, this is a world class plant", says Rakesh Kumar Gupta, Operational Head, Riverina.
The plant also produces 300 tonnes of vegetable protein meal each day for the poultry, dairy and animal feed industries in Australia.
"The performance of the team, pushing all the 500 tonnes of product per day, is an excellent achievement, with the passage of time, we will triple that production" says Jaffrey Wilkinson, a Business Manager at Riverina.
Setting up of this world class plant in Australia just goes on to prove that Indians are next to none when they put their resources and skills in the right place.