Eighteen years, one field, one pan
Riarki Agro Food is a family jaggery unit in Village Metley, Tehsil Batala, District Gurdaspur — cane grown in our own fields, cooked in our own shed.
Village Metley, Batala
We were farmers long before we were a brand
For most of those eighteen years, our cane went to the mill like everyone else's. We watched it come back to the village as white sugar — stripped, bleached, and nothing like the gur our own families ate.
So we set up a crusher and a few iron pans and started making it the old way: cut the cane in the morning, crush it the same day, boil it slow, skim it by hand. Neighbours bought it. Then their relatives in Amritsar and Ludhiana. Then people we had never met.
That is the whole business. There is no factory in another state, no white-label supplier, no "sourced from select farms". There is a field, a shed, and a family that has been doing this a long time.
Four promises, kept since day one
No sulphur
Sulphur makes gur pale, uniform and pretty. It also does not belong in food. Ours is the colour the pan made it.
No chemical clarifiers
We skim the boil by hand with bhindi extract, the traditional way. It takes longer. It tastes like it should.
No old juice
Cane juice ferments fast. Ours never sits overnight — crushed and boiled the same day, every day.
No middleman
What you pay goes to the people who grew and cooked it. That is also why it costs what it does.
Real gur has a season
Crushing runs from roughly November to March, when the cane is at its sweetest and the weather is cold enough to set the gur properly. That is when every batch you buy from us is made.
Through the rest of the year we sell what has been stored properly from that season — and when it runs out, it runs out. We would rather be out of stock than sell you something made in July from last year's syrup.
- Nov – Mar — fresh crushing, everything available
- Apr – Oct — stored stock, limited sizes
- Bulk orders — best placed during crushing season
Cane stacked for the day's crush
Come and watch a batch
If you are anywhere near Batala during crushing season, call ahead and come by. You will get to taste it straight off the pan, which is the only way to really understand the difference.