Diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd on Monday said cumulatively 31,800 spices farmers across 2.2 lakh acres have benefited from its efforts to improve productivity, adopt sustainable agricultural practices and enhance their incomes through export opportunities.

In 2025, the conglomerate emerged as India’s leading exporter of organic spices, creating a large global market for Indian spices while reinforcing its commitment to building globally competitive agricultural value chains and sustainable livelihoods for farmers.

ITC’s state-of-the-art spices processing facility in Guntur, part of the overall ecosystem, reflects the Kolkata-headquartered company’s long-standing commitment to national priorities such as promotion of high-value agriculture, improving farmer incomes, facilitating agri export and development of cutting-edge ‘Make in India’ infrastructure, it said in a statement.

The spices processing facility in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur is one of Asia’s largest for processed spices. Spread over 6 acres with a capacity of over 20,000 MT per annum, it can handle more than 15 spices varieties. The facility anchors an integrated end-to-end organic spices value chain right up to the farmgate and is equipped with specialized processing, logistics and packaging infrastructure to handle organic produce.

The Guntur facility is enabled by end-to-end traceability through barcode-based sourcing, ensuring visibility across processing operations.

Value-added portfolio expands

Talking about the initiative, S Ganesh Kumar, Divisional Chief Executive, Agri Business, ITC Ltd, said, “As part of the ITC Next strategy, we have steadily expanded our Value-Added Agriculture Products (VAAP) portfolio across multiple agri value chains, creating new opportunities and improving farmer incomes, with spices as a key focus area. At ITC, farmer empowerment is central to how we build sustainable agri-value chains in the country.”

The integrated approach ensures that farmers are not just producers but active participants in value creation for the nation, enabling them to benefit from growing global demand for high-quality Indian spices, Kumar added.

The impact of ITC’s interconnected spices development programme on farmers’ livelihood has been significant. According to an earlier analysis by IDH, a global organization, over a 10-year period farmers engaged in these programmes had seen incomes improve by 42 per cent compared to baseline farmers, driven by better yields, cost reduction, quality and market access.

“The insights from the baseline study have helped ITC implement and strengthen the spices’ value-chain. IDH is an international organization that focuses on public and private collaborations to make global agri value chains more sustainable and inclusive,” the statement added.

Published on May 18, 2026