Mega Food Parks Scheme (MFPS)

What was the Mega Food Parks Scheme?

The Mega Food Parks Scheme (MFPS) was a component scheme of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAMPADA Yojana, run by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, that funded large cluster-based food processing parks. Guidelines were first notified on 24 October 2008 and revised several times, most recently with effect from 21 July 2016.

The Mega Food Parks Scheme is closed. According to MoFPI, the scheme was discontinued with effect from 1 April 2021, with provision for committed liabilities only. The Ministry has stated that no proposal from any state for setting up a new Mega Food Park is pending with it. If you are reading this because you want to build a food park, no application route exists; see the successor schemes section below.

The scheme's stated objective was to provide modern infrastructure for food processing along the value chain from farm to market, using a cluster-based, demand-driven approach. Its design linked farm-level collection to a central processing hub:

• Collection Centres (CCs): farm-proximate aggregation points.
• Primary Processing Centres (PPCs); cleaning, grading, sorting, packing, dry warehouses, pre-cooling and ripening chambers, reefer vans and mobile pre-coolers.
• Central Processing Centre (CPC). The core of the park, with testing laboratories, specialised and controlled-atmosphere cold storage, packaging, irradiation, steam sterilisation, food incubation centres and industrial plots for individual processing units.

MoFPI expected each park to host around 25 to 30 food processing units with a collective investment of about Rs 250 crore, an annual turnover of Rs 450 to 500 crore, direct and indirect employment for about 5,000 people, and a benefit to about 25,000 farmers.

How much grant did a Mega Food Park get?

The scheme provided a one-time capital grant:

Difficult and hilly areas meant the North East Region including Sikkim, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and ITDP-notified areas.

Eligible project cost was the total project cost excluding land cost, pre-operative expenses and margin money for working capital. Interest during construction and the Project Management Consultant fee up to 2% of the approved grant were allowed inside eligible cost. Within the cost structure, at least 25% was expected to go to core processing facilities, standard factory sheds for MSEs could occupy a maximum of 10% of the CPC area, non-core infrastructure was capped at 10% of eligible project cost, and captive power plant cost was eligible only up to Rs 10 crore.

Who was eligible for the Mega Food Parks Scheme, and who is eligible now?

Nobody can apply now. The scheme has been closed to new applicants since 1 April 2021, so no individual, company, cooperative or state government is eligible to apply for a Mega Food Park grant today. Only committed liabilities of projects sanctioned before that date are still being funded.

When the scheme was open, the eligibility conditions were:

• The park had to be executed, owned and managed by a Special Purpose Vehicle registered as a body corporate under the Companies Act. State governments, state government entities and cooperatives did not need to form a separate SPV.
• The combined net worth of the SPV's promoters had to be at least Rs 50 crore, and each member needed a net worth of at least 1.5 times their proposed equity contribution.
• The SPV had to bring at least 20% of total project cost as equity in general areas and 10% in difficult and hilly areas. State governments and their entities contributed at least 10%, not necessarily as equity.
• Central government agencies could hold up to 26% equity in the SPV; state governments and their entities faced no such cap.
• The anchor investor holding the majority stake had to set up at least one food processing unit in the park with investment of not less than Rs 10 crore and hold at least 51% in that unit. An alcoholic beverage unit could not be the anchor unit. State governments and cooperatives were exempt from the anchor unit requirement.
• Only one Mega Food Park was sanctioned per district, and no second proposal from the same promoters was considered within two years of completing an earlier park.
• Only food processing industries making products fit for human or animal consumption could be set up inside the park, plus ancillary packaging units.
• SPVs were not permitted to sell plots, only to lease them, and common facilities could only be offered on a rental basis.

How the Mega Food Parks Scheme application process worked

This process is documented for reference. It is no longer available, because MoFPI stopped issuing Expressions of Interest for the scheme.

1. MoFPI issued a notice inviting Expression of Interest. Promoters or SPVs submitted a proposal identifying CPC and PPC locations, land availability, potential investors, estimated project cost, means of finance and backward and forward linkages. Proposals with land already in possession and change of land use granted got preference.
2. The Programme Management Agency evaluated proposals on a 100-point scale, and applicants then presented to a Technical Committee which scored them independently on a 50-point scale.
3. The Inter-Ministerial Approval Committee granted "In-Principle Approval" on the combined evaluation.
4. The SPV submitted a Detailed Project Report within 4 months of in-principle approval, failing which the approval lapsed automatically unless extended.
5. Final Approval followed submission of the DPR, proof of possession of at least 50 acres of contiguous land with CLU, SPV incorporation and a Share Subscription Agreement, a funding plan with a bank term loan sanction and appraisal report, and proof of appointment of an empanelled PMC.
6. Grant was released in four instalments against milestones: see below.

How the Mega Food Park grant was released

The full timeline from the final approval letter to operationalisation was 30 months to 6 months to the first instalment and 8 months between each subsequent one. If an SPV withdrew, it had to return the grant with interest at the SBI benchmark prime lending rate or 10% a year, whichever was higher, within 60 days. Completed parks had to file audited accounts, capacity utilisation and unit status with MoFPI every year for five years after the final instalment.

What did the Mega Food Parks Scheme actually deliver?

MoFPI approved 41 Mega Food Park projects in total. Of these, the Ministry has reported roughly 24 to 25 as operational, with the balance under implementation when the scheme was wound up. Operational parks are located across states including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana and Uttarakhand: Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab account for the largest share.

MoFPI also maintains a consolidated list of 325 designated food parks in India as of May 2024, which includes state-promoted and privately promoted parks outside the MFPS.

What can you apply for instead?

If you are a food processing promoter today, these live PMKSY component schemes of MoFPI are the realistic routes:

• Creation of Infrastructure for Agro Processing Clusters — the closest successor in spirit. It funds basic enabling infrastructure such as internal roads, boundary wall, ETP/STP, water and power supply, plus core processing facilities like warehouses, cold storage and ripening chambers, at 35% or 50% of eligible project cost up to Rs 10 crore.
• Creation / Expansion of Food Processing and Preservation Capacities, for a single unit's plant, machinery and technical civil work, at 35% or 50% up to Rs 5 crore.
• Integrated Cold Chain and Value Addition Infrastructure, for dairy, meat, poultry and fish cold chains, at 35% or 50% up to Rs 10 crore.
• Operation Greens, for 22 perishable crops and shrimp, at 35% or 50% up to Rs 15 crore for integrated projects and Rs 10 crore for standalone ones.
• PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME), the route for individual micro entrepreneurs and SHGs, rather than large parks.

All PMKSY component applications are made online on the SAMPADA portal at sampada-mofpi.gov.in when MoFPI floats an Expression of Interest. No physical application is accepted.

Entrepreneurs who do not want to build infrastructure at all can instead lease a plot or a standard factory shed inside an operational Mega Food Park. Every SPV is required to publish its plot lease rentals and common facility user charges on its website and share them with MoFPI and the state government, so rates are meant to be public before you approach a park.

Where to get help

• Mega Food Park division, MoFPI: Shri Pankaj Kumar, Director, telephone 011-26406510.
• Status of approved projects and the list of operational parks; mofpi.gov.in, under Schemes and Mega Food Parks.
• Live scheme guidelines and EoIs; mofpi.gov.in and sampada-mofpi.gov.in.
• Grievances, pgportal.gov.in, selecting the Ministry of Food Processing Industries.

Treat any consultant offering to "get you a Mega Food Park sanction" as a warning sign. The scheme has accepted no new proposals since 1 April 2021, and disputes over selection, cancellation or withdrawal under the scheme fall under courts and tribunals with jurisdiction over Delhi.

How to check your application status

The Mega Food Parks Scheme is closed to new applicants, so there is no live application to track through a portal login. The only status-tracking that still happens under this scheme concerns the 41 already-approved parks and their pending committed-liability instalments. If you fall into one of these situations, here is how to follow up:

• You are an SPV promoter of an already-approved Mega Food Park waiting on a grant instalment. Status is not published on a self-service dashboard. Your SPV's designated point of contact should write to the Mega Food Park division at MoFPI, quoting the project's sanction letter number and the milestone (land possession, plot allotment percentage, factory shed completion, or unit commissioning) that has been achieved and certified. MoFPI verifies milestones against the utilisation certificate and CA certification already on file before releasing the next tranche, so the practical way to "check status" is to confirm your SPV's utilisation certificate for the previous instalment has been received and acknowledged by the Ministry; instalments do not move without it.
• You are trying to confirm whether a specific Mega Food Park is operational. MoFPI's Schemes page for Mega Food Parks lists the current count of approved and operational parks by state. This is the authoritative public source rather than any third-party directory or a park's own marketing material, since operational status can lag behind a park's own claims.
• You are an entrepreneur who has applied to lease a plot or factory shed inside an operational park (not to MoFPI). That is a private lease process with the park's own SPV, not a government scheme application. Status here means following up directly with the SPV's office, since MoFPI is not a party to individual leasing decisions and has no tracking system for them.
• You have filed a grievance related to the scheme. Grievances routed through the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (pgportal.gov.in) under the Ministry of Food Processing Industries get a ticket number at filing, and that ticket number is what you use to check status on the portal itself; there is no separate scheme-specific tracking number.

There is no SMS or helpline-based OTP status check for this scheme, unlike some citizen-benefit schemes. The helpline number 011-26406510 reaches the Mega Food Park division for direct queries, but calling without a sanction letter number or utilisation certificate reference will not get you a meaningful update.

Common reasons for rejection

Even though no new proposals are accepted today, understanding why past Expression of Interest submissions and Detailed Project Reports were rejected or stalled is useful both for anyone assessing a park's history and for entrepreneurs applying to the surviving PMKSY component schemes with a similar evaluation structure.

• Land not actually in the promoter's possession at EoI stage. MoFPI's evaluation gave clear preference to proposals where land was already possessed and change-of-land-use already granted. Proposals built around land that was only "identified" or under negotiation scored poorly against competing proposals from the same state or region and were routinely passed over. The fix for any similar cluster-scheme application is to secure legal possession and CLU clearance before submitting, not after.
• Combined promoter net worth below the Rs 50 crore threshold, or individual promoters below 1.5 times their proposed equity. Proposals were rejected at the scrutiny stage, before they ever reached the Technical Committee, if the SPV's promoter group could not document net worth meeting both the aggregate and the individual thresholds. The fix is to bring in additional promoters or restructure equity shares before submission, since net worth cannot be certified retroactively once a proposal is under evaluation.
• No credible anchor investor, or an anchor investor proposing less than Rs 10 crore of investment or less than 51% holding in their own unit. Several proposals failed because the "anchor unit" was a placeholder rather than a committed investment with a term sheet or letter of intent. The fix is to lock in the anchor investor's commitment, including their equity share in that specific unit, before the DPR stage.
• Second proposal from the same promoter group within two years of completing an earlier park, or a second park proposed in a district that already had one sanctioned. Both were disqualified on eligibility grounds regardless of technical merit. The fix, where it applied, was simply to wait out the two-year cooling-off period or to relocate the proposal to a different district.
• Detailed Project Report not submitted within the four-month window after in-principle approval. In-principle approvals lapsed automatically on this ground alone, unless an extension was formally sought and granted before the deadline. The fix was procedural discipline: tracking the four-month clock from the date of the in-principle approval letter, not from the date the promoter felt ready, and applying for an extension in writing before the deadline rather than after.
• Funding plan showing an equity contribution below the mandated floor (20% of project cost in general areas, 10% in difficult areas), or a bank term loan sanction that did not match the DPR's stated project cost. Mismatches between the DPR's cost estimate and the bank's actual sanctioned loan amount were a recurring reason DPRs were sent back for revision rather than approved outright. The fix is to finalise the bank appraisal and sanction letter against the same cost figures used in the DPR, not an earlier or later estimate.
• Non-core infrastructure or standard factory sheds exceeding the capped share of eligible project cost. DPRs that padded non-core components (roads, boundary walls, non-processing buildings) beyond 10% of eligible project cost, or factory sheds beyond 10% of CPC area, had those excess costs disallowed from the eligible grant base, effectively reducing the sanctioned grant below what the promoter expected. The fix is to cost non-core and core components separately against the caps before submission, not after MoFPI's own scrutiny catches the overrun.