Bhagvati Oil Mill

We run the oil mill out of Plot No. 114/55 and 56 in the GIDC Estate. It’s a dusty place because of all the seeds coming in, but that’s just how an oil mill is. The machines are old but they work well, and they make a steady thumping sound that you get used to after a while. We spend a lot of time unloading sacks from the trucks and then loading up the drums of oil. There is always a strong smell of crushed seeds in the air, which stays on your clothes even after you go home. My family has been doing this for a long time. We don't have any fancy robots or high-tech computers, just the basic presses and some storage tanks. Sometimes the belts on the motors snap and we have to fix them ourselves on the spot. It’s manual work for the most part. The floor can get a bit slippery if we aren't careful, so we spend a lot of time cleaning up spills. During the harvest season, the place gets absolutely packed with bags of raw materials. We have to stack them high up to the rafters just to make room to walk. It’s a heavy job, and by the end of the day, everyone is pretty tired. We don't have any automated systems for tracking everything; we just use a big chalk board to note down the daily production numbers. It works for us.