Lourdes Matha Cashew Industries has begun a ground up mechanisation and modernisation of its processing units, a project designed and driven by CEO Richard Jobrun and the senior management team, with the guidance of Chairman Jobrun Geevarghese. The work touches every stage of the factory floor. Drying and roasting lines are being upgraded for tighter control over moisture and colour.
Grading stations are being reorganised so that mechanical sizing and hand inspection work together with less handling and fewer delays between steps. Packing lines are being streamlined to keep pace with the increased throughput coming off the floor. None of this changes what the factory has always stood for. Every kernel is still graded by hand before it leaves. The house standard, set over six decades, stays exactly where it was. What changes is how consistently and how quickly that standard is met, batch after batch, unit after unit.
“We looked at every stage on the floor and asked where the team was spending effort that the process could carry instead,” said Richard Jobrun. “The people who inspect and grade our cashews bring judgement no machine can replace. Our job was to give them a floor that supports that judgement, not one that slows it down.”
The plan was built from the ground up, with input from the people who run the lines each day. Procurement, checking, packing and operations heads were brought into the design process early, so that the changes fit how the factory actually works rather than how a plan on paper assumes it should.
Chairman Jobrun Geevarghese, who has led the company since 1969, has backed the project as a natural next step rather than a departure. “What my father built, and what I carried forward, was never about the machinery of the day. It was about doing right by the kernel and the customer. If new equipment helps our people do that better, it belongs here.”
The modernisation is expected to lift productivity across the nine processing units and the centralised packing facility at Puthoor, giving the team more consistent output without asking more of the people delivering it. For a company that exports to markets across the Middle East, Europe, the Far East and beyond, the goal is straightforward: the same quality customers have relied on for years, produced with greater efficiency behind the scenes.
The rollout continues over the coming months, unit by unit, with the senior management team overseeing each stage before moving to the next.
Lourdes Matha Cashew Industries, Kerala, India