HYDERABAD, July 27, 2013: Devotees from far and wide craving for a taste of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam's (TTD) famed laddu prasadam need not despair much longer. For, TTD is working on prolonging the shelf life of the much sought after prasadam and has now sought the advice of the Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) to suggest appropriate packaging techniques, said a top IIP official on Friday.

"The acclaimed Tirupati laddus generally have a shelf life of about 48 hours and TTD has asked us to suggest packing techniques that can help extend the shelf life of the laddus as there is a huge demand for them even from non-resident Indians (NRI)," IIP director NC Saha said on the sidelines of the national conference on global trends in packaging of food, pharmaceutical and bulk drugs in Hyderabad on Friday.

According to Saha, the institute had mooted automated vacuum packaging for the laddus for which TTD would require close to 60 imported machines. "Lakhs of laddus are made in Tirupati every day. Thus they would need to set up a packaging line with around five dozen machines that can pack one laddu per second," he said. The cost of each machine would be around Rs 10 lakh while the extra cost of packaging per laddu would come to just 50 paise," he added.

"We have sent this proposal to TTD and are awaiting their response. The vacuum packaging would increase the shelf life of the laddus by about 15 days, enabling even NRI's to savour them," he said.

The famed Tirupati laddus have also been granted Geographical Indication (GI) patent rights. The GI status bars others from marketing or making Tirupati laddus. Saha also said that IIP has earlier worked on such projects for the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu and Siddhi Vinayak temple in Mumbai.

Source: The Times of India, DT. July 27, 2013.