Within India, the leading country for castor seeds and castor oil, the logistics and distribution for both seeds and oil follow some specific patterns.
This blog post provides more details on this aspect of the castor industry.
Distribution of castor seeds in India follows a particular process.
The process mentioned below is representative of a typical distribution of castor seeds in India.
- Castor seeds are bought to the auction place from the farms
- At the auction place, traders buy the castor seeds through an auction process. There are many traders who do this in each city
- Then, there are a few large brokers who interact with the traders and who in turn are contacted by the crushers & refiners for purchase
The supply chain thus looks as follows:
Pricewise, if X (Rs) is the price per Kg when it is auctioned, the price at which the crusher receives it is about 1.05 X (a 5% increase). This increase results by way of commissions to traders and brokers and for transport costs to the crushing unit.
Researchers developed bio-based polyurethane (BPU) using a castor oil/poly (ε-caprolactone) hybrid polyols and hydrophobic BPU ultrafine fibres containing modified silica (m-silica) by electrospinning process. The rheological analysis of the network structure between the BPU and m-silica showed improved mechanical properties and thermal stability. The average fibre diameter of the hybrid ultrafine fibres decreased with increasing m-silica content. Moreover, the m-silica nanoparticle provided an effective surface wettability to BPU ultrafine fibres, thus making it a hydrophobic molecule. All these improved properties makes BPU/m-silica ultrafine fibres, a better replacement for petroleum-based polyurethane membrane, thus allowing its application in the field of bio filters, eco-friendly textiles, and biomedical engineering.