Beverages & Food Processing January 2018

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India�s Only Monthly Newspaper for Food, Beverage & Allied Sectors

FSNMI

Federation of Sweets & Namkeen Manufacturers of India

World

Feb 10, 2018, Hotel Eros, Nehru Place, New Delhi

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Vol. 10, Issue 08, January 2018,

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

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INDIAN ICE CREAM MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION Sudhir Shah-+91-9849025027 (Secretary IICMA) Samrat A. Upadhyay- +91-76988 69800 (Secretary General � IICMA) Regd. Ofce : A/801, 8th Floor, �Time Square� Building,C. G. Road, Nr. Lal Bunglow Char Rasta, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad - 380 009, Email: info@iicma.in Web: www.iicma.in

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

FSSAI in the process of withdrawing old cases against food companies

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ood Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) is retreating all old cases against Food Business Operator (FBO) which are now terminated under revised regulation. FSSAI has issued a circular to all local administrations in this regard bringing relief to many major multinational food producers and thousands of FBOs in the country.

content in the samples confirmed to revised standards, while it surpassed the level allowed earlier.

The new advisory is meant at avoiding any Maggi-like incidence. In the latest round of controversy, FDAofficials had claimed presence of excess ash in Maggi noodle’s samples, collected a year ago.

The move has brought relief to many FBO in the country, who had been finding it difficult to deal with frequent change in norms and had cases filed against them. In the past few years, thousands of cases have been lodged against FBOs. Fortune oil from Adani Wilmar, Frooti mango drink from Parle Agro, Safola Gold cooking oil from Marico and Mirinda from PepsiCo were found ‘substandard’ by various local authorities. Apart from Maggi instant noodles, Nestle’s Cerelac Wheat also came under regulator’s scanner.

However, after reviewing it was found that ash

Nestle is pleased that the FSSAI has issued an or (Contd on Pg no, 13)

World Mithai & Namkeen Convention on 10th Feb in Delhi

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many other firms are going to attend this meet. s innovations and new trends enter the This sector has witnessed tremendous growth food industry, and to further promote in recent years as several players have switched sweets & namkeen segment, the Fedfrom traditional methods to modern eration of Sweets & Namkeen Manumeans of manufacture and trade. facturers of India (FSNMI) along with FSNMI The consumption ratio is vast in AIM Events have organized World India as everyone, right from a 5 Mithai & Namkeen Convention for year-old child to senior citizens is this first time in New Delhi scheduled the consumer of namkeen & sweets. to take place on 10th February, 2018 at This sector cannot face a dip in the Hotel Eros, Nehru Place.

Meetings Discussions Knowledge consumption pattern as Indians alEntertainment Gala Night ways crave for namkeen and deliThe event will be graced with the presExhibition cious sweets. ence of several leading companies of this segment like Haldiram, Mota Briefing media persons, Organiser and Treasurer Chips, Bikanervala and others. Companies like of FSNMI, Firoz Naqvi said “World Mithai & Balaji Namkeen, Jain Namkeen, Green Dot Foods, Namkeen Convention 2018’will provide a plat Vadalia Foods, Chheda Chips, Kadimi Sweets and

Federation of Sweets & Namkeen Manufacturers of India

World

Feb 10, 2018, Hotel Eros, Nehru Place, New Delhi

Official Media

India's Only Monthly News Magazine, Portal & App For Agro, Food & Allied Industries

Media Partner

Advance Infomedia & Events ............................................................................

121, 1st floor, Rassaz Multiplex, Station Road, Mira Road (E), Mumbai-401107. India T: +91-22-28555069, Firoz H Naqvi : +91-9867992299, firoz@advanceinfomedia.com Fiza Parkar: 9076310034, fiza.parkar@advanceinfomedia.com Website: www.wmnc.in

(Contd on Pg no, 9)

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

FOOD PROCESSING NEWS

WB to attract investment in food processing sector

Mega food park in Himachal Pradesh to be inaugurated shortly

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he first mega food park at Una, Himachal Pradesh will be inaugurated soon, said the directors of project management consultants, NAPL. They will help Cremica establish the food park in Una as the total project cost worked out to Rs. 99.70 crore. Directors at NAPL, Ritwik Bahuguna and A P Sinha said “An investment of another Rs. 150 to 200 crore can be expected from the 3–4 companies that have evinced interest in setting up their food processing units in the park.”

NAPL has been associated in development of this project from the conceptualization stage in 2012.

The park is being established in 50.46 acres of land.

“Cremica is developing this park and is working to set up India’s largest tomato processing plant in this facility, with capacity to extract 600 tonnes of pulp a day. It would be a multi-crop pulping line to enable processing of other fruits including water melon,” Bahuguna added.

Sinha said “We at NAPL have not only been responsible for finalisation of the location and preparation of a project report, but also in detailed design and engineering and construction supervision as well. We are now working on forward linkage to ensure supply of raw material (tomato) from farmers in the vicinity of the park. NAPL has identified around 2,500 farmers within a radius of 80 to 100 kms from Una. The identified farmers are involved in the programme.”

Sinha agreed that delay in project uptake was mainly because the land was not available. “When we finally got all the approvals, the interest on term loan touched a high of 12 per cent. There has been an increase in the project cost.”

NAPL has worked in similar capacity for four more mega food park projects with similar scope of work at Punjab, Jharkhand, MP and Gujarat.

Punjab CM inaugurates ITC integrated food processing facility

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aptain Amarinder Singh, Punjab Chief Minister inaugurated ITC’s new state-of-the-art Integrated Food Manufacturing and Logistics Facility at Kapurthala, giving a major fillip to the state’s food processing sector and strengthening its beleaguered economy.

The CM elucidated that this facility will create opportunity for farmers, the project will help generate employment in the state.

Spread over 72 acres of land, with an initial investment outlay of approximately Rs 1,500 crore,

ern India.In presence of Mollah some key persons from food processing industries expressed their views on ‘Vision 2025’.

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inister-in-charge of Food Processing Industries and Horticulture of West Bengal, Rezzak Mollah said the state expects some big investment in food processing sector this monthn All India Food Processors’ Association (AIFPA) in support with Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MOFPI) held their 73rd annual conference followed by a national seminar on development of food processing industries in East-

State Secretary of Food Processing Industries and Horticulture Nandini Chakravorty and Secretary of MOFPI and J P.Meena also attended this event.

Rezzak said“Recently ITC have invested 1500 crore rupees in Punjab’s Kapurthala food park. For Bengal, there is no emergency planning of food park to be made as we already have two food parks in Malda and Murshidabad.”

The symposium gave a clear scenario of cutting-edge technologies to revolutionise the food processing industry in the coming decade. It also assured to promote north-east as the foremost source of organic fruits, vegetables and herbs.’Vision 2025’ is eyeing eastern region as one of the major resource of food processing industry.

Food processing sector to attract USD 18 bn in 4 years

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ood Processing Secretary J P Meena said that the food processing sector has a great future and can generate huge employment opportunities, besides increasing farmers’ income.

Hence Indian food processing industry could attract an investment of USD 18 billion in the next four years as this sector provides great business opportunity with an annual growth rate of over 8 per cent.

demand for raw material with processing units.

the world-class facility will manufacture ITC’s popular food brands, such as ‘Aashirvaad’, ‘Bingo!’, ‘Sunfeast’, ‘YiPPee!’ and ‘B Natural’, among others.

Besides supporting the record contribution of the state to the nation’s rice and wheat production, Captain Singh underlined the need for diversification, in which the ITC project would play an important role.

During the World Food India event held in November 2017 the government received an investment commitment of USD 12.5 billion in the food processing sector. That apart, the government has launched Rs 6,000 crore ‘SAMPADA’ scheme to boost food processing sector and this programme would attract an investment of Rs 31,000 crore or USD 5 billion.

The government would soon launch a scheme to set up mini food parks across the country. Under this scheme, grant up to Rs 10 crore would be provided.

Expressing happiness at the facility, which would help farming community transition from the traditional wheat-crop cycle more lucrative crops, Chief Minister said such projects would be instrumental not only in saving the state’s crunched fertile land and water resources but also in boosting farm income.

Meena said the ministry’s emphasis is to connect food processing industries to production centres and farmers and showed concern that farmers’ income and their living standards have not improved even as production has increased over the years.

Thus the food processing sector could play an important role in increasing farmers’ income, but to achieve this, there is a need to connect farmers’

He said the country imports many fruits and vegetables even as there is enough domestic supply as processing units do not get varieties and quality they need. There is a great future for food processing but connecting with farmers is important and if this is done, it will be a win-win situation for both farmers and processors.

Exclusion of tractors from category of commercial Vehicles a necessity: Badal

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arisimrat Kaur Badal, the Union Minister of food processing has requested Union minister of Transport Nitin Gadkari to exclude tractors used for agricultural purpose from being considered as commercial vehicles. She emphasized that as per new rules tractors have been excluded from the category of non-transport vehicles. This effectively means that tractors used for agricultural purposes will be treated at par with commercial transport vehicles.

This process of considering tractor as commercial vehicles was having a negative effect on the lives of lakhs of farmers in the country and therefore it is necessity to remove tractor from this category.

Badal, said that once this new law was implemented, all laws governing commercial vehicles would be applicable on tractors, including requirement of permit, minimum educational qualification for driving, besides the financial constraint of higher GST which would go up from 12 per cent to 28 per cent.

Requesting the Union Road Transport Ministry to reconsider this decision, Badal said given the demographic profile and economic condition of farmers in the country, especially in Punjab, which was an agrarian state, tractors needed to be kept out of the purview of commercial vehicles.

She said this was also needed because farmers were already distressed and would be further burdened with increased tax on tractors.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

BEVERAGES NEWS

Food and beverage is the Parle Agro to enhance portfolio fastest growing online channel with new fruit-based drinks

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lobal online food and beverage sales will increase 80 per cent in the next five years, according to research firm. This growth will outpace the 73per cent growth projected for the broader retail industry during the same time period, the firm notes. By 2022, the forecasts state that global online retail sales will eclipse traditional grocery sales. While store-based modern and traditional grocery retailing combined will remain larger, internet retailing is changing the traditional way of shopping for many products especially for groceries.

While online grocery shopping has grown rapidly abroad, adoption in the U.S. has been sluggish at best. According to reports, online grocery sales account for just 2per cent, or $16 billion, of the $800 billion American food retailers take in annually.

Compare that to 7.3per cent market share retailers in the United Kingdom enjoy or 19.7per cent share in South Korea.

According to the research firm, three factors are contributing to this sales acceleration: increased mobile phone usage, improved retail websites and interfaces, and growth of crowd-sourced services that fulfill online orders. In addition, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods last summer accelerated grocers’ adoption and expansion of e-commerce,

PepsiCo announces top-level global management rejig

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epsiCo has rearranged the top-level global management following which Mike Spanos will become CEO of AMENA region in place of India-born Sanjeev Chadha, who is set to retire in March.

As part of the changes, Chadha will become Chairman of AMENA (Asia, Middle East and North Africa) through the end of first quarter of 2018 reporting to PepsiCo Chairman and CEO. Further, Ram Krishnan, currently Senior V-P and General Manager of the global PepsiCo Walmart business will become President, Greater China Region (GCR), succeeding Spanos and would report to Spanos, who will also report to Nooyi.

According to Nooyi, Mike is one of the most seasoned and proven leaders and Chadha’s continued support as Chairman of AMENA until his retirement at the end of March will ensure a smooth transition.

Chris Turner, currently senior V-P of transformation for Frito-Lay North America will become senior V-P and General Manager of global PepsiCo Walmart business, reporting to Al Carey, CEO for North America.

An IIM Ahmedabad alumnus,Chadha had moved to head PepsiCo Middle East and Africa in January 2011. Prior to that, he was Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo’s India Region from 2007 to 2010.

Krishnan is with PepsiCo for more than a decade, where he has served in a number of senior leadership roles.All the major changes are effective from January 1, 2018.

with many big names partnering with the likes of Instacart and Shipt.

Despite these growth prospects, analysts don’t see a future in which online sales eclipse store sales.

E-commerce’s market share could climb as high as 30per cent, but anything past that seems tough to imagine given consumer preferences and the distinct nature of grocery retailing.

What this refers to, specifically, is research that shows consumers want to buy fresh products instore, since they can smell and touch and see what they are purchasing themselves rather than relying on a “shopper” to do so. Report shows that 28per cent of online sales at present goes to canned and pantry goods while 16per cent goes towards snacks. However, in third place is produce with a surprising 14per cent share.

Grocers have improved their handling and quality checks around produce and other fresh items. If they can continue to build trust with online shoppers in these categories, there’s no telling how high e-commerce grocery sales could go.

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arle Agro is all set to add products to their existing portfolio which includes fruitbased drinks like Frooti, Appy and Appy Fizz, and bottled drinking water brand Bailley.

The company targets to become Rs. 5,000-crore company by 2018. Parle Agro wants to increase its market share year-on-year seeing the increased popularity of fruit drinks.

In 2005, Parle Agro introduced Appy Fizz — an apple flavour fizzy drink created the fruit-based fizzy drink category and today it occupies a 99 per cent market share. Early last year, it launched ‘Frooti Fizz’ — the first extension of its most popular and largest revenue generating brand, Frooti in 32 years.

Joint Managing Director and CMO of Parle Agro, Nadia Chauhan, is open to brand extension and portfolio expansion with more fruit-based offerings. “We will, of course, try and expand the portfolio. I think that’s something important to us.

But, unlike a lot of other companies we are not the ones who will go on introducing many products at a time.

We take our time. Our agenda is to introduce products with a difference, which is not a copy of an existing one. Such innovations take a long time to establish and we have quite successfully done that.”

While Frooti enjoys a 25 per cent market share in the mango-based drink category, Appy (the apple flavoured drink from Parle Agro) occupies a 65 per cent market share in the apple-based drink segment.

Chauhan said there is no “either / or” between fizzy and non-fizzy drinks when it comes to determining the future growth drivers for Parle Agro.

The entire fruit-based drink segment is growing.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

AGRO PROCESSING NEWS

Agro-based entrepreneurship should be encouraged in J&K state

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nion Minister Jitendra Singh said the government’s focus was to build capacity of farmers and create jobs in the agriculture sector. The minister of state in the PMO was speaking at an awareness campaign on centrally sponsored schemes for agriculture organised by the Directorate of Field Publicity, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, at the Government Degree College.

Stressing that there was a need for new perspectives to promote agro-based entrepreneurship, Singh emphasized on capacity building and job creation in agriculture and its allied sectors. Similar initiatives were already underway in the northeast. The campaign was aimed to help farmers avail benefits of government schemes to double their income by 2022. Technical initiatives taken in the agriculture sector would ensure an increase in productivity and augment the economic profile of the farming community as envisaged by the Prime Minister.

Kathua MLA Rajiv Jasrotia said farmers should make use of modern technology to increase productivity. This is like a game changer for the farmers of Kathua after Shahpur Kandi Project who was hanging in balance since the last 40 years

Union Minister said over two acre land for Seed Processing Plant has been identified at village Tarf, and took up the issue with Chief Secretary of the State to expedite the land transfer process.

He said the land belonged to Irrigation Department and have given NOC to CS for its transfer to Agriculture Department. After the process is completed and land is acquired by Agriculture Department, the National Seed Corporation, Union Agriculture Ministry organization will establish the Seed Processing Plant in Kathua, he added.

The latest technology research based seeds to the farmers of the State will be available. Moreover under Fresh Jammu Initiative, the farmers produce from different parts of the region can be taken to the other mandis of the country in fully equipped high-tech vehicles in which the agri produce will remain fully preserved.

tor is contributed by livestock, fishery and forestry, FM Arun Jaitley should particularly focus on these segments of the economy along with a major thrust on agriculture infrastructure like irrigation.

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The industry body observed that the shortfall in the second leg of the monsoon seems to have impacted the Kharif production.“Besides, distress in prices of several agri-commodities would have also played a role in lower realisations as seen in the growth deceleration on the current prices,” it said. ASSOCHAM Secretary General D S Rawat said since more than half of the GVA in farm sec-

“With bulk of our population employed in the rural landscape, India’s consumption led growth and investment cannot be realised unless the entire farm sector is pulled out of stress. Major part of India Inc is heavily dependent on rural demand which would remain subdued if immediate steps are not taken in the short term and medium term.”

Farmers must be extended all help in the ongoing Rabi season and it must be ensured that adequate protection is given to them if market distortions creep in to their disadvantage. “Timing is very important in agriculture and steps like import duty or export measures must be initiated well in time so that the benefits reach the farmers and are not pocketed by the intermediaries,” it said.

As per ASSOCHAM, rural oriented companies in fertiliser, seeds, farm equipment, two-wheelers, FMCG, food processing would be vulnerable if the agriculture sector does not perform as well as other sectors.

With growing population India can’t survive on imported food

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Venkaiah Naidu, the Vice President of India has urged for a collective focus on agriculture as India with a population of 130 crore cannot survive on imported food security and has advised people to join the efforts of the government in promoting agriculture.

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has set a tar-

dia, which is a self-certification process supported through the PKVY scheme, these farmers are not allowed to export.

In fact, the APEDA has made it mandatory to have a third-party certification for exports. This is despite the fact that globally more than 100 countries, mostly developing countries, recognise the PGS. Unless farmers under PGS India are allowed to export, they cannot earn the premium price.

and was revived recently with the intervention of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Singh said while with Shahpur Kandi there will be adequate irrigation facilities in Kathua and Samba districts, the Seed Processing Plant and Fresh Jammu initiative will bring ease of agriculture entrepreneurship and also open vistas for young startups.

ASSOCHAM: Govt. must give top priority to agriculture in budget

he year-to-year agriculture GVA (Gross Value Addition) growth for July-September quarter of 2017-18 has fallen to 1.7 per cent from 4.1 per cent, measured on basic prices, the drop looks sharp at current prices from 10 per cent to 3.7 per cent. ASSOCHAM said the government should give top priority to agriculture in the budget as a major shortfall in kharif production resulted in sluggish growth of farm sector in the second quarter this fiscal.

Lack of policy hinders the Organic farming in India

get of doubling farmers’ income by 2022, but according to Naidu, agriculture was becoming an unviable pursuit and thus, the aim to double farmers’ income by 2022 was a challenge. This is important too as people are leaving agriculture and going to other professions. An agriculturist does not want his son to continue with the profession because of uncertain monsoons, natural calamities, market exploitation etc. All this is affecting agriculture.

Adding that the rural-urban divide had to be bridged, Naidu said, “Gandhiji had said ‘Ram rajya’ was incomplete without ‘gram rajya’, this has to be kept in the mind. I am sure the government is focusing on ending the urban-rural divide and ensuring that people living in rural areas are provided basic amenities.”

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he Indian government has been commissioning measures to encourage organic farming with the aim to improve soil fertility and help to double the farmers’ incomes by the year 2022. The Prime Minister had visited Sikkim—which is India’s first organic state and encouraged other states to replicate the “Sikkim model”.

Some of the policy initiatives to promote organic farming and exports include development of an organic regulation for exports by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), removal of quantitative restriction on organic food exports, providing subsidies to farmers and other schemes such as the Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region. Despite these initiatives move to organic farming methods may not be that easy and organic farmers are not getting the expected premium price for their produce.

Many factors affect and hinder its growth like the under developed supply chain because of which small and mid-sized farmers located in hilly regions and tribal belts find it extremely difficult to access the market. There is a shortage of pack houses and refrigerated vehicles, which leads to spoilage. Organic products have to be stored separately from conventional products to avoid cross-contamination and the existing supply chain does not often provide that facility.

While the government is supporting organic product marketing through fairs and exhibitions, it does not give farmers a steady market. In a number of cases, the middlemen take away most of the profits and farmers are not able to earn a premium price. Direct linkages to processors and retailers could have helped farmers to get a better price, but farmers lack the right linkages and hence have to depend on middlemen and mandis.

Also the government is subsidizing farmers under the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) for In-

A number of countries, such as the United Kingdom, have carefully designed subsidies to compensate for the yield loss during the conversion period, as a farmer converts his/her land from conventional chemical-based farming to organic farming, there is a risk of loss in yield due to the withdrawal of chemical inputs and high-yielding varieties of seeds. However, in India, there is no such subsidy. Further, a majority of the government budget and subsidies are targeted towards chemical-based inputs and, in many states, less than 2 per cent of the budget is allocated to organic farming Another blockage in the path of organic farmers is a serious shortage of good quality organic inputs, which increases the risk of loss of yield.

The available organic fertilisers are much below the required quantity, and there are a number of spurious players in the market too. Similarly, there is a shortage of good quality organic seeds.

And the biggest challenge faced by organic farmers is the lack of an organic policy for the domestic market and imports. In the absence of regulation on labelling standard for organic production and logo, it is not possible to distinguish an organic product from a conventional product. This has led to fraudulent practices and genuine players are not getting the premium, which the consumers of organic products are willing to pay. While the absence of a policy makes it difficult to punish fraudulent players, the government cannot enforce punishment on the basis of a voluntary certification process.

Therefore, over 79 per cent of the farmers opined that the certification process should be mandatory and the government should help farmers under PGS India to get the mandatory certification once their land is converted to organic. In fact, over 91 per cent of survey participants pointed out that there should be a uniform logo for organic, which will help in product identification. The study further highlighted that if the right policy measures are taken, then organic farming is expected to grow at 20 per cent in the next five years.

Need to push agro processing to hike production: FM

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inance Minister Arun Jaitley began the pre-Budget consultations with stakeholders in the first meeting with representatives of different agriculture groups.There is a need to conserve water, incentivise agro processing and promote balanced use of fertilizers in order to ensure higher agriculture productivity.

Jaitley said in order to achieve the goal of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022, there is a need for better storage and marketing facilities for the farmers’ produce so that they get better prices.

India has constantly pursued ‘Food Policy’ and Budget 2018-19 is an opportunity to shift to ‘Farmers’ Policy’. There is a need to reduce pressure on the land by creating off-farm jobs.

To ensure the delivery of remunerative prices to farmers, the ‘Price Deficiency Payment Mechanism’ must be implemented immediately for those crops where procurement cannot be ensured. It

was suggested to double the number of farmers receiving loans up to Rs 2 lakh at the interest rate of 1 per cent only and link Aadhaar to such loan accounts to avoid duplication and also greater emphasis on agro forestry for income generation.

Other suggestions included creation of a small group of 5-6 experts who can monitor on monthly basis the agriculture production data of different crops and global market conditions or to do advance planning rather than the government reacting suddenly to an adverse situation.

Also there is a need to conserve water, balanced use of fertilisers to ensure higher agriculture productivity.

The Centre should declare an ‘Agriculture Debt Relief Package’ for the entire country which is used with matching contributions from the state governments.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

(Contd from Pg no,5)

form to all the manufacturers from different parts of India to come together for benefits of their trade and industry. This will also provide a chance to entire allied industry to meet manufacturers and demonstrate their products and services.

The seminar will also provide the industry to share their thoughts with the concerned government departments and policy makers. We expect all the companies involved in sweets & namkeen business and allied sectors to join this endeavor, firstof-its-kind in India. They must support the seminar-cum-expo through participation, sponsorship and advertisement.”

This event shall prove significant for the industry as there will be discussions and presentations on several matters related to this segment. Topics like technological advancements in mithai & namkeen industry, choosing right ingredients for the products, global packaging trends, food safety and challenges in mithai & namkeen segment and other issues will be discussed at this meeting.

Mondelez India launched 3D chocolate bar

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onsumers always look forward to new product launch & innovations as taste and preference keeps changing. Major chocolate brand Mondelez India announced their new innovation, a Cadbury 5Star 3D, a premium offering for this segment. This chocolate bar is crunchy, chewy, and chocolaty and consumers will ‘Get Lost at a Different Level’.

Director – Marketing (Chocolates), Mondelez India, Prashant Peres said “Cadbury 5Star is one of our strongest brands under the Indian portfolio and has always experimented and revamped itself. After Cadbury Fuse launch last year, we are extremely delighted to bring in Cadbury 5Star 3D that is a great milestone in our premiumization journey and will further strengthen our market leadership in the countline segment. ]I’m confident that Cadbury 5Star 3D will urge consumers to ‘Get Lost at a Different Level’ because of the elevated taste appeal and brand connect it brings to the table. Our eccentric and quirky characters Ramesh-Suresh who have been synonymous with Cadbury 5Star to aid the brand generate strong cut through and continue to be much loved by our consumers.

Cadbury 5Star has been a favourite sweet for almost five decades in the Indian market. Cadbury 5Star 3D - Made-in-India innovation is a step further in the brand’s journey of leading premiumization in the chocolate category.

Cadbury 5Star is one of India’s most popular chocolates and had set a benchmark in chocolate manufacturing segment with the introduction of chocolate, caramel and nougat as ingredients and has since become famous as a multi-textured, indulgent delicacy.

Cadbury 5Star 3D has been developed to suit the consumer palette will have a distinctive purple and golden packaging and an elevated taste appeal.

Cadbury 5Star 3D will be first available on Big Bazaar, followed by traditional trade stores. Cadbury 5Star 3D is reasonably priced at Rs. 30 for a 45 gram offering, giving customers an all-new different experience.

www.agronfoodprocessing.com

CHOCOLATE NEWS

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

FSSAI STAND

FSSAI responds to the CAG Report

Assures citizens that they can trust food they get

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the field. The web-based FoSCoRIS system will help verify compliance of food safety and hygiene standards by food businesses. FoSCoRIS guarantees uniformity, transparency and enables Food Safety Authorities to monitor it digitally.

esponding to performance audit report by the CAG tabled in the Parliament on 19th December, 2017, FSSAI assures citizens that they can trust food they get. FSSAI is confident that the country’s food safety ecosystem is well on the way to become more robust and globally benchmarked in the years to come.

Food Testing In its report, CAG has raised concerns regarding lack of equipment, shortage of manpower and absence of accreditation of the state food laboratories in the country. Accepting the reality, FSSAI pointed out that it has been working over the past couple of years to ensure that the state food laboratories and referral laboratories are fully equipped and functional. Central government is making an investment of Rs.480 crore for strengthening of the state food laboratories and referral laboratories.

For training and capacity building of lab staff, over 24 training programs have been conducted the last year alone, some of which were with international experts to bring in best global practices. 64 Master Trainers have been created in a cascade approach, who in turn would train hundreds of more lab personnel, and 300 persons have been trained in Good Food Lab Practices in just one year.

Further, handholding support is being given to states to support them in getting NABL accreditation. 23 labs across 22 states /UTs are being funded for upgradation which will lead to NABL accreditation eventually, and over 140 lab staff have been trained in NABL accreditation processes. Overall 45 labs across States/ UTs would be supported.

The number notified private labs have increased from 82 to 152 as of now. It is proposed to provide for 62 mobile food testing laboratories across all States/ UTs. As of now, 19 mobile food testing labs have already been made available to States/ UTs. To increase the pool of food analysts in the country, in an intensive drive, 3 sets of exams have been conducted in the past year and 204 Food Analysts have been notified out of a pool of thousands of applicants; the 4th exam is being conducted in January 2018 to further enhance this pool. A policy for selecting and training Junior Analysts through a Fellowship program is also on the anvil in partnership with NIFTEM. INFoLNET is a holistic lab network and management system where information is available from all labs in a central database; samples can be tracked and information on testing and technical strengths of labs is available. As of now, 170 out of 242 laboratories have been registered on INFoLNeT.

It also needs to be clarified that as per section 98 of the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, tests done by state laboratories that were inherited by FSSAI from Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) era are all valid under the transition provisions.

Formulation of Standards and Notification of Regulations Recent years have also witnessed rapid progress in developing new regulations and food standards.

FSSAI has notified nearly 9000 provisions for use of around 400 food additives in various food categories, several of which address the majority of issues related to product approval after the discontinuation of the product approval system. These include interalia Regulations on Health Supplements and Nutraceuticals, Approval for Non-Specified Food and Food Ingredients Regulations and Import Regulations.

Majority of Directions issued under section 16(5) of the Act have been brought into the fold of regulations. Such directions are normally issued to expedite the notification of regulations on areas that have been specified in the Act, but are yet uncovered. FSSAI has notified 4 principal regulations; 7 new regulations which are at various stages of finalization; and 59 amendments to various regulations since 2015.

FSSAI has put in place a robust system comprising of 17 Scientific Panels and a Scientific Committee for review and establishment of science-based standards. In order to address concerns of food businesses and get structured inputs on formulation of standards, Standards Review Groups have

been set up with members from Industry Associations. This is only an input, which is then considered by Scientific Panels and Scientific Committee and the Authority. Structured inputs are also taken through consumer groups and organizations in setting standards.

Product Approvals The system of Product Approvals was suspended on directions of Supreme Court on the ground that it was carried out on strength of advisories by FSSAI and not under regulations. It needs to be clarified that fresh Product Approvals were suspended immediately on the receipt of orders of Supreme Court. In case of product approvals already granted, a risk assessment had been duly carried out as per usual practice, and since the orders of Court were based on procesural rather than safety issues, no action was required to be taken on these cases.

Further, it must be noted that provisional PNOCs on product approval given for one year have all lapsed. Therefore, there is no need to withdraw such product approvals. Now, necessary regulations have been framed for Product Approvals not specifically covered under existing regulations.

Food Safety Compliance and Enforcement Several state food authorities have conducted surveys of food business activities under their jurisdiction and some states have not been able to do so due to acute shortage of manpower. In such cases, limited staff is optimally utilized in effective enforcement and putting pressure on businesses to adhere to food safety and obtain licences and registrations. FSSAI conducts annual, periodical and geographical area based surveillance activities for effective implementation of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 and Rules and Regulations made thereunder. During the current year, Milk Survey is being undertaken.

In the area of Licensing, FSSAI is simplifying processes for licensing and registrations by rationalising and reducing the documents that are required to be submitted. The focus is to ensure more effective enforcement and administration of the FSS Act. FSSAI has developed mechanisms for risk based inspections and shared the same with States.

However, several states do not have adequate manpower to conduct as many inspections as they should, for want of manpower.

Web Based Inspection System (FoSCoRIS) Further, FSSAI has developed a web-based Inspection System FoSCoRIS (Food Safety and Compliance through Regular Inspections and Sampling) based on Standardised Checklist for inspections of food businesses by Food Safety Officers in

Coordination Mechanism on Food Regulatory Ecosystem to facilitate Investment and Trade FSSAI has established a robust procedure for information sharing and coordination with customs and other agencies for food regulatory matters which would ultimately facilitate investment and trade. There will be an institutional mechanism comprising of all the relevant ministries/ departments and other agencies which would deliberate on issues such as: coordination in standards setting and quality benchmarking; coordination in regulatory compliance and inspections to reduce regulatory burden on food businesses; coordination in food testing to ensure credibility including issues relating to recognition of labs outside India; and resolve differences among agencies; take up joint initiatives in the above areas for further facilitation of investment and trade.

One Nation One Food Law FSSAI has launched the Food Regulatory Portal which will act as a single interface for food businesses to cater to both domestic operations and food imports. Further, strengthening government’s vision for ease of doing business in India, FSSAI has launched ‘One Nation One Food Law’ initiatives for all state level food authorities. The ‘One Nation One Food Law’ would ensure consistency and predictability of business environment and enable state food authority to standardized their method of testing, surveillance and implementation of food safety regulation across the country through the help of the Food Regulatory Portal.

Recruitment Regulations FSSAI has finalized the Recruitment Regulations and asked for creations of about 600 new posts to strengthen FSSAI set up across the country. About 200 these posts are for essential functions of food safety, inspection and enforcement that were not considered at the initial creation of posts. These functions were also identified essential during performance audit by C&AG. 48 posts proposed are for IT Division, a function earlier outsourced and now being carried out internally. About 40 posts are for social and behavioral change, training and capacity building that require special skill in media, communication, curriculum development, pedagogy and consumer outreach.

General FSSAI appreciates the inputs from CAG to improve performance of food safety. CAG report should however be seen in the context of the huge and complex task at hand and the fact that FSSAI is now an evolving organization and it faces severe constraints of manpower and resources.

It would have been useful if the report had noted a lot of very useful work done by the FSSAI over years that has helped to raise the profile of food safety in the country significantly in recent years.

Nevertheless, FSSAI continues to be committed to raise the bar for food safety and hygiene in the country so that citizens can trust food they get in the marketplace.

Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

EDIBLE OIL NEWS

Ruchi Soya focuses to boost capacity utilization benefits

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s the government had almost doubled the import duty on all edible oils in November that will likely have a positive impact on the domestic edible oil prices. This move works in favor of the farmers as they receive profits onthe increase in oilseed prices. Eventually they will have increased planting area in the upcoming soyabean season. Ruchi Soya has the largest oil seed extraction (crushing) capacity in India with 3.72 million MT capacities across 10 locations.Thecapacity utilisation is expected to double in the current year to 30-35 per cent with an increase in crushing operations.

Ruchi Soya announced that it looks to improve capacity utilization benefits after the positive announcements in the mid-term review of the export policy. Increase in export incentives for agriculture and related products along with the 2 per cent additional incentive under MEIS scheme for soyameal will help Ruchi Soya’s oilseed extraction business with an increase in capacity utilization as well as increased output of value added products.

COO of Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd. Satendra Agarwal said, “Crushing operations at key plants at Indore, Nagpur,Washim,and Kota have been on the uptrend by 30 per cent to 40 per cent as compared to the first half of the current year. Coming on the back of our strengthening supplies to Patanjali, the increase in export incentive and increase in import duties will further improve the business en-

Edible oil industry can receive impetus with good trade plans

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he effect of hike in import duty of edible oil is now seen in mandis across the country .Central government on November 18 almost doubled the import duty on all variants of edible oils. The hike worked in favour of farmers and soybean is leading the oilseed price increase.

Oilseed prices increased following the government’s decision to bail out domestic edible oil producers through a sharp rise in import duties. Soybean prices went up by seven per cent to Rs 3,052 a quintal in Indore mandi.Prices of all other variants of seeds and oils have also risen. Castorseed rose by 2.7 per cent to trade currently at Rs 4,548 a quintal. Rapeseed oil and groundnut oil prices are up by 6.41 per cent and 2.27 per cent, respectively, to trade at Rs 83,000 a tonne and Rs 90,000 a tonne in the week ended December 1.

Chief Executive Officer, Adani Wilmar, producer of the Fortune brand of edible oils, Atul Chaturvedi said “The measures have turned around the fortunes of edible oil producers with many of them planning to increase their operating capacities, which had declined to their lowest level of 3035 per cent in November. “Crushing activity will certainly receive a boost. Now prices of oilseeds, edible oils and meals will go up. In turn, farmers’ realisation will also rise.”

Largest oilseed extraction company in India, Ruchi Soya’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Dinesh Shahra said “The two per cent additional incentive for soya meal should benefit our oilseed extraction business with an increase in capacity utilisation and output of value-added products. This will have a positive effect on our margins.” The Solvent Extractors’ Association of India states that the country’s 350 solvent extraction plants have an annual oilseed processing capacity of 30 million tonnes. India imports 15 million tonnes of vegetable oils (crude and refined) to meet a demand of 24 million tonnes.

vironment.The availability of soyabean had been boosted since farmers were selling after government agreed to pay them the difference between market price and MSP (minimum support prices).

The soyabean prices today are more than the MSP further increasing the availability. We expect increased crushing with enhanced export viability to further augment our capacity utilisation to the extent of 20 per cent with a consequent increase in overall margins.”

MD and CEO, Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd, Dinesh Shahra said, “We welcome the increase in incentives that will help boost exports from the labour intensive sectors like agriculture. The increase of Rs.1,354 crore in the incentives for Agriculture and related products will given an additional lift to agri industries that in turn will benefit all stakeholders including the farmers. It is heartening to see agro-processing as a focus area in the Government’s drive to increase exports to new and untapped markets, and is a big positive for the industry. We also look forward to the New Agricultural Exports Policy to give a long term direction to the industry through a stable policy regime.”

Cargill launches high oleic canola oil

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lobal food company Cargill has introduced new high oleic canola oil with less saturated fat in the global market.

The company claims that its new oil product is produced using canola hybrid that contains 4.5 per cent or less saturated fat, which can be used for high fry and has the ability to maintain shelf life, performance, and taste of the food product.

Cargill noted that its new canola oil reduces saturated fat content by 35 per cent in comparison to previous canola oil generations.Cargill research and development department said that the company is committed to innovation with a purpose with a focus on responsibly nourishing the world.

At the same time, the canola was bred to meet customer demands providing high yield and disease resistance for growers and taste, shelf life, and fry life qualities for our food manufacturers and restaurant customers.

The new canola oil will be rolled out to the global retail market this early next year.

Healthy diets balance the types of fats that are consumed, and those can then be replaced with healthier options, like unsaturated fats, which have been shown to decrease bad cholesterol and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

This new low-sat, high oleic canola oil is no exception. Cargill has dedicated ten years to finding a canola hybrid that could improve the nutrition profile of its oil.

Cargill’s high oleic, low saturated canola oil will join other oils and shortenings offered commercially under the Clear Valley brand.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

FOOD SAFETY NEWS

FSSAI initiate public-private plan to FSSAI plans to bring more transparency in food inspection put together a multi-city food guide on this network, to reach the helm of the industry, technology is needed and FSSAI has it.

FSSAI has created a smart and digital compliance system. A large-scale IT platform for Food Safety Compliance through Regular Inspections and Sampling (FoSCoRIS) is being put in place for adoption across all States.

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ood Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) shall use technology in a huge way to implement its norms and has set up an IT platform for safety compliances to bring consistency and transparency in inspection.FSSAI will soon make it mandatory for all food businesses to employ food safety supervisor, outlined CEO Pawan Agarwal, further adding that the move would be a game changer and reduce compliance burden.

Agrawal stated that the regulator has started using technology in registration and licensing of the food business operators (FBOs) and all the systems are IT-based. He stressed that the authority has strengthened its internal IT team to ensure effective compliance of food safety law.

The regulator has developed standardised testing methods and protocols for food products and launched IT enabled Indian Food Laboratory Network (INFoLNet). All food labs, which are FSSAI notified, are submitting food testing reports online

This smart-phone based system is being tested in Madhya Pradesh and Goa by the food safety officers and will soon be rolled out across the country. This will bring uniformity and transparency in food safety inspection and sampling.

The regulator is partnering with other stakeholders including corporates and consumer organisations to achieve its mandate to provide safe and wholesome food to all. However ensuring compliances of food safety regulations in unorganised sector is a challenge.

FSSAI has organised training programme for street vendors but there is continuous need to engage with them. Agarwal said the authority has taken many initiatives in last few years and has also sensitized state government as they are responsible for enforcement of food safety law.

However, there is a long way to bring States on the same page. But now there is greater engagement with the food safety commissioners.

GFSI to establish Indian bureau for food safety

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lobal food companies such as Cargill, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Danone, Tesco, Metro Group and Amazon have come together in India to work with the government, the regulator and academia to ensure food safety, it is said that this step is taken in order to avoid another Maggi-like debacle.

Nestle India Ltd, the local unit of the Swiss packaged food maker Nestle SA, had to face in 2015 after the regulator Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) declared a nationwide ban on Maggi Noodles over safety concerns.

Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)which is managed by France-headquartered international trade organization Consumer Goods Forum plans to establish an Indian arm, and India will be the seventh Local Group of GFSI to be formalized early this year.

The core team of GFSI India wing, which will have 20-25 members to start with, will have representatives from most of the firms that constitute the Board of GFSI. It will bring GFSI’s global practices to India and mobilize the local food industry, besides engaging with the regulator and other government authorities regarding food safety issues and practices followed by companies.

Having a local wing in India is not common practice among global industry-specific lobby groups.

Other industry-specific lobbies, such as GSMA that lobbies for cellular operators worldwide, have representatives in India but not a formal India wing.

India is among the fastest growing markets for packaged goods. In 2015, cumulative revenue of

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he Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) endorses The Indian Food Manifesto, officially released by the Tasting India: Farm to Table Symposium after its concluding panel discussion chaired by Dr Pushpesh Pant, noted culinary historian and Padma Shri awardee, on December 16, 2017.

fast moving consumer goods firms in India was about $47.3 billion, which is predicted to cross $103 billion in 2020, according to data by market research firm Statista.

GFSI, which was set up under Belgian Law in May in 2000, works on improving food safety management systems across the world.

The concept of local groups is part of GFSI’s plan to implement its global strategy at a local level and exchange local knowledge with the global team.

At present, GFSI has six local groups—South Latin America, Mexico, Japan, China, Europe and US-Canada.

GFSI comprises leading food safety experts in retail, manufacturing and food service companies, as well as international organizations, governments, academia and service providers to the global food industry. GFSI’s global board includes representatives from food and food retail firms.

Making this announcement at the Symposium in the presence of the Global First Lady of Indian Cuisine, Madhur Jaffrey, FSSAI CEO Pawan Agarwal highlighted the Manifesto’s ten points may have covered a vast area of concerns, but they also represented guiding principles for action programmes.

He added that the country’s premier food regulatory authority would also support two initiatives mooted by experts during the discussions as mentioned below: To dedicate, on the lines of Gout de France, a day every year for the global celebration of Indian Cuisine. Indian restaurants around the world would serve one menu put together by an international committee of Indian chefs (working both in India and overseas) and Indian diplomatic missions To develop an Indian alternative to the Michelin Guide, on the lines of the Gault Millau in France, Osterie & Locande D’Italia in Italy, and Zagat in the United States.

Talking more about the initiatives, Agarwal said that “We believe this initiative will make the world not only get to sample the best of Indian cuisine, but also discover the vast variety of Indian agricultural produce and spices.”

Adding further, he also described as how this multi-city guide will be dovetailed with the FSSAI’s proposed hygiene ratings for restaurants to enable both Indian consumers and international

In June 2007, eight major retailers—Carrefour of France, Tesco of UK, ICA Gruppen AB of Sweden, Metro AG of Germany, Migros of Switzerland, Ahold of Netherlands, Wal-Mart of the US, and Delhaize of Belgium—agreed to follow a common food safety scheme benchmarked by GFSI.

The symposium opened with the media launch of the FSSAI’s initiative against hunger - Save Food, Share Food, Spread Joy: Indian Food Sharing Alliance (IFSA) and linking it with getting street food vendors to join this national campaign by pledging to make fresh food donations.

At the Symposium, discussions were led among many others, by distinguished and diverse personalities such as NITI Aayog’s CEO Amitabh Kant; Karnataka’s Agriculture Minister, Krishna Byre Gowda; Director-General (Tourism), Ministry of Tourism, Satyajeet Rajan; The Oberoi Group’s President, Kapil Chopra; The Select Group’s Chairman, Arjun Sharma; the acclaimed scientist, Dr Suman Sahai and Asia’s single largest producer of potatoes, Jang Bahadur Singh Sangha.

FSSAI also announced the pre-event highlights of National Street Food Festival which is being organised in association with NASVI (National Association of Street Vendors of India). The threeday long festival will be held from 12th to 14th January, 2018 at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi.

The Festival stand out for the level of involvement of the street vending community from across the country, the compliance of the participants with safe hygiene practices, and footfalls it drew throughout the three days it was on. It has truly become a landmark in Delhi’s annual social calendar and has also raised the bar for street food vendors.

In view of its positive experience, and to institutionalize the festival, the Authority has decided to support this year’s National Street Food Festival.

Agarwal further mentioned that the festival is an effort to sensitise vendors from across the country to safe food practices and to global hygiene and sanitation standards.

The festival comprises of components from various sectors such as theme on Organic Food Bazaar, Temple foods of Indi, Festival Foods of India, Flavours of India and cultural and recreational activities. The festival will also be marked by presence of Street Food Legends of the country.

Mobile food testing lab launched in Goa across the state checking food samples on the spot. Parrikar said this would be the first ever ‘Food Safety on Wheel’ vehicle in the entire country. “It is entirely funded by the Centre, which will also bear the maintenance cost for five years.

Besides the board, GFSI has technical working groups and benchmarking leaders who work for improving food safety management systems globally.

Besides benchmarking of food safety schemes, enhancing food safety management systems, GFSI is currently working on bringing the farm-to-fork food supply chain under a food safety management system.

tourists make safe dining choices. “This would be run by an independent body of experts to insulate it against any undue influence.”

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ith several initiatives taken by the government to ensure food safety, Chief Minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar recently launched country’s first-ever mobile food testing laboratory.

He unveiled the vehicle in presence of Goa Food and Drugs Administration Minister Vishwajit Rane. The mobile food testing lab cost Rs 41 lakh.

The laboratory mounted on a bus shall travel

The laboratory will help in on-thespot testing of food items and curb adulteration. Besides this, it will also educate people about nutrition and importance of safe food.” Parrikar added that awareness about food items is crucial as ‘most of the time we don’t know what is mixed in the food that we eat.’

Director of Food and Drugs Administration, Jyoti Sardessai said the vehicle is equipped with milk analyser, hot air oven, hot plate, mixer grinder, digital weighing scale, digital multi parameter hand-held meter, power generator, air conditioner and refrigerator.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

FOOD SAFETY NEWS (Contd from Pg no, 5)

Food regulator orders food safety audit in IITs, IIMs and AIIMS

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ood Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) said it has ordered safety audits of the canteens at 10 large educational institutes, including IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, in view of complaints with regard to food safety and hygiene standards. FSSAI said that audit will be done by empanelled 15 agencies and they will be given one-month time to submit report. Food regulator said that audit has been ordered as number of cases of food safety issues have been reported from hostels/canteens of various academic institutions in India. “In view of this, FSSAI has ordered special food safety audits of the canteens, cafeterias, hostel mess etc of 10 select large central institutes of higher education like IIT (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Guwahati), AIIMS (Delhi and Jodhpur), IIM (Ahmedabad and Kozhikode),

IISc Bangalore and IISER Kolkata,” FSSAI said in a statement.

FSSAI has taken up audits of food business operators through third-party audit agencies to strengthen the food safety surveillance system.It has empanelled 15 audit agencies in accordance with the Food Safety and Standard (Food Safety Auditing) Regulation, 2017. The audit in select 10 institutes will help to check whether hostel cafeteria where food is handled in these institutions comply with the food safety and hygiene standards prescribed under the food safety law.

These reports will provide an insight into the existing standards of food safety and hygiene of these canteens and will help FSSAI to identify the gaps.

FSSAI expect that the results of these audits will serve as guidance to these institutions to improve and maintain the standards of food safety and hygiene in their premises, the statement said.

The authority has enlisted national and international food safety audit agencies like DNV, Bureau Veritas, Intertek, MS Certification, IRCLASS, SGS, BIS, TUV, Indocert among others. “For the time being these agencies have been provisionally empanelled since the regulation is still at draft stage,” FSSAI said.

Government to establish a self-regulation platform for food companies: FSSAI

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ood Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) Chief Executive Pawan Agarwal said that the government will establish a self-regulation platform for food companies, retailers stocking packaged food and fast-food restaurant chains.

This move will help scale them against the best in class, thus raising standards and making companies attentive of rules and consumers. It will also encourage healthy competition among companies, retailers and QSR chains and will be an open platform for consumers to see for themselves.

FSSAI has invited the top 200 companies by sales to join the platform in the first phase of the self-regulation exercise. The FSSAI said it will make public names of companies that don’t want to participate.

This “food safety and shared responsibility” score will be a publicly accessible online platform for companies to rate themselves against parameters such as compliance with regulations, nutritive content, dealing with consumer grievances, upstream and downstream supply chain capacity and

promoting food safety in schools. It’s been dubbed ReFoc for responsible food companies score.

The companies will be ranked on basis of their declarations and the platform will also mention names of companies which haven’t shared the required information. While all categories will have a repository of good practices, companies that want to share additional information will be provided a template to do so. Companies such as Hindustan Unilever, PepsiCo, Nestle,, Parle Products, Danone, ITC, Patanjali and Mondelez, retailers like Walmart and Future Group, Aditya Birla Retail and Spencer’s Retail and quick service restaurant (QSR) chains including KFC and McDonald’s will be put on an equal self-compliance footing under the plan.

“By engagement, sharing, cross-learning and healthy competition, we want to raise the bar not only for food safety but make foods businesses more responsive to consumers and government regulation,” Agarwal said. “As we move forward, we will make this matrix more robust.”

FSSAI faces severe manpower constraints and ‘is a new and evolving organisation’

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ood Safety Standards Authority of India stresses that it faces severe manpower constraints and is a new and evolving organisation. This was because it was pulled up by the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) pulled up (FSSAI) for irresponsibly issuing licences to food companies without complete documents and questioned the quality of testing.

The CAG in its audit found systemic inefficiencies, delays and deficiencies in the framing of regulations and standards and the specific direction of the Supreme Court. The CAG also found that licenses were issued on the basis of incomplete documents in more than 50per cent cases test checked in the audit. CAG has raised concerns regarding lack of equipment, shortage of manpower and absence of accreditation of the state food laboratories in the country. Accepting the reality, FSSAI pointed out that it has been working over the past couple of years to ensure that the state food laboratories and referral laboratories are fully equipped and functional.

FSSAI stated that the citizen can trust it and that

CAG report should however be seen in context of the huge and complex task at hand and the fact that FSSAI is a new and evolving organisation and it faces severe constraints of manpower and resources. It would have been useful if the report had noted a lot of very useful work done by the FSSAI over years.

Central government is making an investment of Rs 480 crore for strengthening state food laboratories and referral laboratories. It is also investing in training of staff and handholding National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories accreditation.

On the allegation of delay in formulating regulation the food regulator said that recently rapid progress has been made in developing new regulations and food standards.

FSSAI has notified nearly 9,000 provisions for use of around 400 food additives in various food categories, several of which address the majority of issues related to product approval after the discontinuation of the product approval system.

PepsiCo also welcomed this step quoting that this is a progressive step that augurs well for the industry and are completely safe”, he added.

Data shows, during 2014-15 some 13,700 food samples were found adulterated by various regulators and 10,269 cases were launched. Next year, 9,745 cases were filed after over 14,000 samples were found to be adulterated or misbranded.

der bringing clarity on pending cases filed on the basis of old norms and standards, and where the products are in conformity with standards which have since been introduced or revised.

As of now, exchange of ideas and concerns between the companies and FSSAI is now more open and the regulator now seeks more insights from the industry.

Online portal by FSSAI for food collection and donation

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n a move to reduce wastage of food, and going beyond their role of ensuring safe and standardised food, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has started a novel initiative of gathering the individual and institutional efforts of collecting and donating food to the needy and impoverished in the country by launching an online platform called Indian Food Sharing Alliance (IFSA). The food wastage that happens after due processing as well as at the food service businesses in the country, the initiative will be soon piloted in Delhi by FSSAI. Pawan Aggarwal, CEO of FSSAI introduced the concept of ‘Save Food, Share Food, Share Joy’ at the second Tasting India Symposium in Delhi.

Agarwal said that “interventions are required at various levels to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. There are people, agencies, food service businesses which want to donate food to this cause, but they do not know how to do it. Our endeavour is to build an eco-system of food donors, recovery agencies, etc. and integrate all the efforts. The idea is to create a large donor base of food collection

and donor agencies. In order to make the system transparent, the platform will have a ‘geotagging’ provision by which people will be able to know where the food collected is distributed.”

FSSAI CEO said TATA Trust has come forward to support the cause. They will support it by providing necessary equipments to recovery agencies and other civil society agencies engaged in collecting and donating food.

In addition to IFSA, FSSAI will also launch two campaigns to educate and create awareness about food donation. One campaign will be launched with the support of National Street Vendors Association (NSVI). The campaign – Street Food Vendors Have a Heart – will strive to educate the street vendors on the need for food sharing. NSVI has assured its support such that every street food vendor will donate every 10th meal for free to a needy person. In the second campaign – I too Have a Heart – FSSAI plans to encourage food businesses including restaurants to donate 100 packets of food every month to IFSA.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

WAKE-UP CALL

India�s Only Monthly Newspaper for Food, Beverage & Allied Sectors

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Vol. 10, Issue 08, January 2018,

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evenues of the processed food industry is estimated to touch Rs 60 trillion, while Indians are expected to eat processed food valued at Rs 72 trillion annually by 2025.

So to have a flourishing food processing industry, it is important to provide safe and wholesome food for citizens and should be looked upon as an investment for increasing productivity of the workforce that will later reap economic dividends for the country.

It is important to point out that food safety is an important issue as it affects the growth of food industry, people’s health care and nation’s growth in the long run. Unsafe food imposes substantial direct and indirect costs. Therefore, a strong food regulator becomes an absolute necessity for a nation’s sustained and balanced development. Keeping these factors in mind, FSSAI was established in 2006 under the Food Safety and Standards Act. It was an important step which consolidated all the food safety legislation spread across different ministries under one head and marked a paradigm shift in food policy from a narrow focus on adulteration to a more holistic approach on the provision of safe and wholesome food. But regulators inability to keep up with the pace as well as vigilant outlook on the food industry has brought the question on an important fact; are we eating unsafe food, are we being misled by our food safety regulator.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found irregularities and glitches in the functioning of FSSAI. It has kept a prime focus on the working of Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) and the main glitches it found were that the authority had failed to keep pace with the rapidly growing industry; did not have well-run laboratories and most licenses issued by it to business operators were without complete documentation.

According to CAG, the FSSAI is guilty of various lapses in enforcing food safety across the country and starting from 2012, the authority has diluted its regulations, bypassed established protocols and ignored warning from its scientists to allow the sale of more than 800 processed foods with new formulations without assessing their safety. Some of these are still in the market. Of course this dilution goes against the provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, mandating that only scientific panels can decide if a food product or food type is safe to consume.

When the CAG did a test audit of 50 proprietary food products approved for sale to consumers between 2012 and 2014, it found that even the diluted regulations were not followed. In many cases, the authority did not send the product for scientific assessment even after giving it the temporary no-objection certificate. A note written by the authority’s Chief Executive in May 2015 shows, it had issued such certificates to over a thousand products but sent only 200 of them for testing.

The CAG highlighted the case of a company called Chemical International that had received a no-objection certificate to sell a mushroom-based nutraceutical in August 2012. A month later, the authority’s scientists asked for the product to be banned as the company had not submitted clinical data about its claimed health benefits. But the authority did not cancel the licence for the product.

Similarly, FSSAI had granted permission to Pushpam Foods and Beverages to sell an energy drink called Restless Ginseng. But soon its scientists informed the authority that the main ingredient of Restless Ginseng made a dangerous cocktail that could increase heart rate and blood pressure, as it was already known internationally. Still the authority took seven good months to react. It was only in June 2015 that it withdrew the no-objection certificate given to the company to sell the product. Despite the authority’s action, Pushpam Foods continues to promote the drink on its website. The food safety authority has evidently failed to check whether the product has been withdrawn from the market.

This arbitrary clearance system was struck down when challenged before the Bombay High Court and its decision was validated by the Supreme Court in 2015. With the clearance regime banned by the courts, sale of proprietary food products should have stopped until a new system was put in place. But, the CAG found that after Bombay High Court judgment, the food safety authority issued ‘blanket instructions’ to its licensing authorities to renew or continue all existing licences issued on the basis of the no-objection certificates it had already issued.

Despite the order from country’s apex court, the regulator did not take any action to withdraw these blanket instructions. Albeit both FSSAI and Union health and family welfare ministry which oversees it, have been dismissive of the CAG’s report. The main thrust of their defence is that it’s old news and a new set of regulations has been put in place starting 2016.

India's food processing industry could attract an investment of USD 18 billion in the next four years as this sector provides great business opportunity with an annual growth rate of over 8 per cent. The sector is poised for sky rocketing development as it has mapped itself diligently on the International arena. But CAG’s reports will definitely deter the growth of Indian processed industry, as food safety is a matter of highest concern and if our own food regulator is framed to be the corrupter then what else is left to say!

Hopefully FSSAI answer to this report apart from blaming individual state systems or by claiming that the report is outdated.

Wake-up India! Food Food processing is considered as one of the fastest growing industries in India. Given the natural supply advantage and a population of 1.3 billion people, total consumption of the food and beverage segment in India expected to increase from US$ 369 billion to US$1.142 trillion by 2025. It is a priority sector for the Indian Government as well as one of the focus sectors in the Make in India initiative.

It is estimated that the market for plant and machinery in the food processing sector in the year 2024-25 will be USD 51.41 billion as compared to the current value of USD 17.3 billion (2016-17).

The Government of India, particularly the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI), as part of the focus sectors under Make in India, is encouraging technological advancements for the industry by providing specific incentives to the sector in terms of duty reductions, duty exemptions etc. Given this scenario, there lies abundant opportunities for various multinational companies to explore the manufacturing of equipment for food processing sector in India, but still the government initiatives are not working on ground.

According to our recent research, the food processing machinery export is witnessing a huge dip which is a cause of concern for the government.

Even the MOFPI officers and industry experts are in dilemma about the regular decline in export of food processing machines. Clear signs of tension can be seen on the faces of MoFPI officers in context with the increasing import.

Department of Commerce, Government of India, reported that country imported USD 168 million worth of plant and machinery in the year 201617. However, this number does not include generic equipment, which are not exclusively used in the food processing industry. Therefore, the actual size of the import of equipment used in food processing sector could be larger.

During the year 2016-17, out of the total import of USD 168 million for food processing equipment, import for dairy sector equipment was USD 16.75 million and for all other subsectors in the food processing was USD 151.63 million. While earlier in 2014-15 this data was USD 199.8 million and in 2015-16 it was 215.76 million.

China, Germany and Italy are the top three countries from where India imported its food processing equipment in 2016-17. Sector wise, bakery and cereal processing is the single largest segment in terms of import of machinery.

Food Processing Equipment: Market Scenario & Growth Opportunities in India The growth in processing equipment market in India is driven mainly by increased demand for processed food products. The consumer is shifting towards more value-added food categories such as yoghurt, cheese, processed meat and ready-to-eat food products. In addition, there is a growing demand for processing basic products such as fruits, vegetables and grains which require technologically advanced equipment. Therefore, there is a need to adopt new methods, technology, and machinery for the food processing industry with least impact on sensory qualities such as colour and texture.

Technological advancements are necessary for the growth of the sector and for the diversification of the existing production capacity of the food processing industry.

The next phase of growth of food processing sector will require creation of infrastructure across the value chain. There is a massive requirement for infrastructure creation, pack houses at the farm gate, cold storage facilities across the value chain, latest technology for processing of food products while retaining its nutritional value, multi-modal logistics, infrastructure at port gateways with phyto-sanitary facilitation etc.

There are equipment manufacturers specialising in manufacturing equipment used in the food processing sector and support infrastructure addressing unique features of the industry. Some of the key features of equipment used in food processing sector are high precision, automation with high speed, ability to withstand harsh cleaning agents, precise temperature control among others.

Food processing requires high precision in the equipment for quality, safety, and hygiene. Stainless steel fabrication is must for any machinery that comes in direct contact with the food product and must be free of cracks and crevices that might retain food particles.

The automation requirement in food processing equipment is quite advanced and sophisticated.

Largely, the machines used in the industry have similar automation and motion control needs, such as material conveying and positioning, heating, drying and cooling.

The food processing equipment has a constant need for cleaning and disinfecting, gentle handling and precise control of temperature, pressure, treatment times and other process parameters. Many digital sensors, pipes, transmitters, tanks, tubes are used in the processing line. This equipment need to withstand harsh cleaning agents, ranging from steam and water to alkaline solutions, organic solvents, hypochlorites, iodine compounds and nitric acid.

Export-import of machinery The total market size of food processing equipment industry in India is estimated at US$ 17.3 billion. The estimate is considering only the organised industry. There has been a steady increase in market and the overall growth of Indian market averaged at 25 per cent, considering the next four years. Among India’s total machinery production only around 10 per cent of food processing equipment are exported out of total domestic production, while 65 per cent of total agro-food processing equipment industry is imported.

Export Data Global food processing manufacturers are shying away from Made in India machine resulting a huge dip in machinery export from consecutive three years. During last decade the export volume of the country was on its peak and India export its machine to USA, European countries along Asian countries but the conditions are totally changed now. Even the Make in India initiative is useless for the local manufacturers of food processing machines.

Export data of last three years reveals that in financial year 2017-18 country exported US$ 41.52 crores, while in 2016-17 it was US$ 114.52 crores.

In 2015-16 the value was US$ 136.65 crores and in 2014-15 US$ 212.28 crores.

Import Data Advanced technological requirement for the food processing sector makes India one of the largest importer of plant and machinery in the sector. The technological advancements also create a need to replace older machines with new ones for the food processing companies. Therefore, India is poised to remain an attractive market for technology companies for their solutions to both new entrants as well as existing players for replacement of older machines.

According to the database of the Department of Commerce, Government of India, India imported US$ 85.2 crores worth of food processing machinery in current financial year 2017-18. In 2016- 17 the value was US$ 204 crores while in 2015-16 the value was US$ 187.29 crores and in 2014-15 it was US$ 179 crores.

Global technological status The availability of raw materials, changing life-

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

WAKE-UP CALL

Processing Machinery Export is on regular decline styles, needs to offer broader selection of food products at lower costs and innovation in technology are some of the key factors which helps to drive the growth of food processing equipment market worldwide. Among various food processing equipment, bakery and pasta equipment market is growing at faster rate. Growing income level of individual leads to more investment over food processing equipment. Large population base in Asia Pacific countries and frequent change in food preference among individuals lead to increasing demand for food products.

This changing trend leads to investment more on food processing equipment. Due to advancements in technology related to cutting, slicing and grinding in food processing equipment, many manufacturers in food industry are replacing their older machines with newer ones, which are more efficient and boost their bottom line through higher throughput.

Asia Pacific is one of the fastest growing markets for food processing equipment. The market is driven by increasing demand of processed food products in emerging and developing countries including India, China, Indonesia and Thailand. In Asia Pacific region, China accounts for the largest market in food processing equipment. The total market size of the Indian food processing industry is expected to be reach around USD 330.0 billion by 2014-15. In North America region, the U.S. accounts for the largest market in food processing equipment. Growing awareness level regarding new food products, rising economy, investment on research and development over food processing equipment are some of key reasons, which drive the food processing market in European region.

Global food processing equipment market is expected to grow in single digit growth during forecasted period 2014- 2020.

Technology Status in India In India, thousands of food-processing units are currently doing business. The equipment of some of these units are outdated with very poor hygiene conditions. These units offer a good replacement market for food-processing equipment suppliers.

The food processing machinery market in India is growing at an average rate of 15per cent. Experts feel food industry in India is huge and there are traditional and medium equipment manufacturers, who have locally made equipment for food and beverage processing.

The machines and equipment used by those are of inferior quality, whereas there are a few big companies who have high-end equipment machinery for food and beverage sector. As we go ahead, companies have to update technology and machinery, because there is huge demand for processed food products with changing lifestyle and consumer preferences.

However, the technologies available in India in the agro-food processing equipment sector are still in the learning curve when compared to the developed countries. There has been a net inflow of equipment from Europe, especially from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Czechoslovakia and also from Australia. The presence of companies like Alfa Laval is a proof enough which further strengthens this hypothesis that India has been a net importer of technology in the equipment sector. In India, the major thrust in research and development in the agri-food sector has been on the primary processing of food rather on developing equipment in this sector. There has been pioneering efforts put forward by the CFTRI, IARI, DRDL, Post-Harvest Technology Centre (PHTC, IIT Kharagpur) and DFRL. These laboratories have been fairly successful in developing innovative equipment in the agro-food processing sector.

Most of the technologies available in the equipment sector which could be considered as globally competitive fall in the category of pre-harvest technologies.

Make in India: The Make in India initiative was launched by Prime Minister in September 2014 as part of a wider set of nation-building initiatives. Devised to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub. However, on ground implementation is missing Make in India also means make best machines in India for that Indian companies need support in technical matter for up gradation of products and manufacturing practices, like china has done before the export boom in their country.

this downfall. During financial year 2016-17 rupee touched the lowest level resulting economical slowdown. However, during FY 17-18 there is bit change in conditions but predictions of crack down in rupee during December 17 to February 18 has put the whole industry in tensions.

However, the results of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” drive to attract foreign investment is yet to be seen. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s glitzy campaign to showcase India as the world’s next manufacturing hub meets with criticism. Major cause of concern is the conflicting data and vague timelines that raise questions about Modi’s “Make in India” drive, which he called “the biggest brand created in India. According to experts the results are yet to be seen, as the infrastructure as well as the expertise and investment are not in sync. A lot more must be done to get results.

Declining Value of Money: The Indian rupee has been witnessing turmoil against the dollar ever since the beginning of this year. The Indian currency tested the 28-month low of 68 against the dollar During financial year 2015-16 and 2016-17.

P.M is pushing to lure manufacturers that can create millions of jobs, allowing India to take advantage of a demographic dividend as its population surpasses China in the next decade. While India’s 1.3 billion people and high growth rate make it a stand-out among emerging markets, other indicators are grim: Investment remains weak, exports have fallen for 14 straight months, borrowing costs are relatively high and trade deals have stalled.

Modi’s efforts to make it easier to operate in Asia’s third-biggest economy have yet to show up in key external indicators. In the World Bank’s Doing Business index, for instance, India still ranks 130 of 189 economies well short of Modi’s goal to crack the top 50 in two years. Experts believe that Make in India is glittery scheme and government has highlighted it a lot, but the ground results are yet to be seen and felt.

Reasons of Declining Export The export of food processing machines in India is regularly declining while the import is touching new heights. As per experts, regular decline in value of rupee against dollar is main reason of

Experts also believe that cheap financing of machines from overseas and easy availability of loans from Indian banks are also main causes of regular downfall in export of food processing machines.

Global economic slowdown: This the major factor which is contributing to both the stock markets and Indian currency fall. China’s yuan devaluation has also been hurting the sentiments globally. China has been witnessing a slowdown, with the International Monetary Fund has reiterated and while slashing the global growth forecasts for the third time in less than a year IMF has cited a sharp slowdown in China trade and weak commodity prices that are hammering Brazil and other emerging markets.

India’s Trade deficit: Exports contracted for 13th month in a row in December 2015 as outward shipments shrank 14.75 per cent to $22.2 billion amid a global demand slowdown. Imports too plunged 3.88 per cent to $33.9 billion in December over the same month previous year. Trade deficit during the month under review widened to $11.6 billion as against $9.17 billion in December 2014.

Exporters facing difficulties in GST transition period Engineering exporters’ body EEPC India, said that shipping companies are facing difficulties post GST as their drawback refunds will not be released till September-end or October. Moreover, the supplies of goods to the export-oriented units from the domestic tariff area are not considered as “deemed exports” under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, resulting in denial of duty free imports of

inputs under the ‘Advance Authorisation’ scheme of the government, the exporters’ body said in a statement.

“In fact, several schemes for giving a boost to exporters by the commerce ministry have been turned upside down and their functioning has become extremely difficult or not viable,” EEPC India Chairman T S Bhasin said in a statement.

Exports of engineering goods constitute the biggest share in India’s overall export basket and are therefore, vital for job creation, particularly in the small and medium enterprises segment.

“Our members have informed us that it would be impossible for them to export in August and September as per this refund time schedule. We request and kindly urge the finance ministry to make the GSTN operative for processing returns and refunds by the beginning of August,” EEPC India said in its communication to the finance and commerce ministries.

According to the exporters’ body, as supply of goods to the export oriented units (EoU) from domestic tariff area are not considered as “deemed exports” in the GST regime, shippers are not allowed to import the inputs without payment of duty under Advance Authorisation. Moreover, exporters will have to pay the basic customs duty, cesses and IGST for imported inputs to be used for supplies to EoU. They are entitled to input tax credit of only IGST. Basic customs duty and cesses are thereon a cost to them.

Conclusion MoFPI’s capital grant under PMKSY is to facilitate investment in the food processing sector in India. PMKSY, with an allocation of INR 6,000 crore (USD 882 million) by the year 2019-20, will induce an investment of INR 16,800 Crores (USD 2.5 billion) in plant and machinery during this period. Government subsidy linked projects are direct opportunity for equipment manufactures as most of these projects are new and are related to encouraging investments in plant and machinery.

System is doing a lot but the regular downfall in export is not a good sign for Indian government as local market is now becoming tough for domestic manufacturers.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

RETAIL NEWS

Ola plans to invest $200 million Organised retail must grow together with old players: Prabhu in Foodpanda India Foodpanda’s global operations were sold to Delivery Hero by investor Rocket Internet in December last year, fallout of the bloodbath that the food tech space witnessed in India. Several start-ups in the foodtech space shut shop and many large firms cut costs and looked at profitability.

O

la gears up to take on UberEats of global rival Uber and local outfits such as Swiggy and Zomato, as it re-enters the online food-ordering and delivery business by acquiring Foodpanda’s India unit. Ola had exited the on-demand food-ordering space in May last year, when it closed down its pilot, Ola Café.

Softbank-backed Ola plans to invest $200 million (approximately Rs 1,300 crore) in Foodpanda India as it looks to engage millions of users more often on its platform. Rocket Internet-backed Delivery Hero owns Foodpanda globally, will get a minority stake in Ola. For Foodpanda India, the cash infusion will help the company take on Swiggy and Zomato, which have shown more robust growth over the past year.

Saurabh Kochhar, CEO of Foodpanda’s India unit will move on to pursue other opportunities, with Ola’s founding partner Pranay Jivrajka taking over as interim CEO of the food-ordering company.

Delivery Hero will continue to collaborate with Ola to build Foodpanda’s service in India.

Swiggy and Zomato currently lead India’s online food ordering and delivery market. Food panda’s partnership with Ola shall allow further consolidation of markets, where it strategically makes sense to collaborate with leading local players.

The German ‘start-up factory’ continues to be the largest investor in Delivery Hero is valued at around $3.1 billion, with around a 37 per cent stake in the company. For Ola, the acquisition opens up a channel to Rocket Internet, which is one of Europe’s most prolific venture capital investors.

Foodpanda claims it has over 15,000 restaurants listed on its platform across 100 cities in India.

In comparison, UberEats is up and running only in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and New Delhi, and even in these cities its scale of operations is currently limited.

While the company is offering deliveries at just Re 1 in order to get more customers to order on its platform, it could take some time for Uber to begin capturing a sizeable chunk of the on-demand food delivery market.

While Ola will inherit a loss-making business from Delivery Hero, Foodpanda India has been able to cut its losses from Rs 142.63 crore in FY16 to Rs 44.81 crore in FY17.

Foodpanda is one among the top three food-ordering platforms in India and, along with Ola’s backend logistic efficiencies, it could begin mounting pressure on Zomato and Swiggy. Even globally, ride-hailing, food-ordering, and other on-demand services are seen as converging due to synergies between these sectors.

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ommerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said organised retail sector should not displace mom & pop stores but help create more employment opportunities besides offering wide range of products at reasonable price. At a CII conference, the minister said the government is in the process of making policies to boost growth of every sector, including retail. The retail trade has a huge potential and this industry will play an important role in the growth of manufacturing, agriculture and even services sectors.

Prabhu said“Retail business must take into account the social issues. The organised retail should be done in a manner that it does not affect the social challenges. They should create more employment, should not displace the retailers who already are in business for years.”

Organised retail should add value to the business and must create employment. They should provide customers varied choice and offer good price.

When big corporate entered the retail sector, there was fear that it will create conflict.“There is a need to understand complementarily between the so called organised retail and large scale retailers working in India from a long time. They must

W

hole Foods shoppers reveal that that the quality of the grocer’s produce has deteriorated significantly under Amazon’s ownership. Customers said they have purchased rotten, tasteless fruits and vegetables, and have noticed more out-of-stocks this fall.

After riding a wave of positive publicity following its pre-holiday price cuts, Whole Foods may be in danger of losing some of the good vibes it gained with shoppers.

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Adopting policies that will help create an ecosystem for retail business to expand and grow at even faster pace.Stating that there are huge opportunities in retail trade, the minister said the organised retail with huge capital and unorganised retail should partner to create win- win situation for growth of the entire sector.He also favoured competition among retailers as this would benefit consumers.

The minister said the growth in retail sector would also boost manufacturing, agriculture and even services sector as retailers market all the products.

The retail industry must focus on creating proper supply chain and cited example of huge loss of fruits and vegetables due to lack of cold storage.

He said the government is planning to create a hub from where vegetables and fruits can be exported, and mentioned that the ministry is in talks with Civil Aviation Ministry for this purpose.Regarding growing e-commerce sector, Prabhu said online trade has immense opportunities and could be a game changer.

Whole Foods shoppers say produce quality has suffered under Amazon

Whole Foods, in response said nothing has changed operationally or with its produce quality standards that would account for a decline in quality.

No compromise.

grow hand in hand, without creating conflict,” Prabhu said.

The problem with this latest grounds well of discontent is twofold. First, it concerns one of Whole Foods’ core categories, and one that defines the company’s image. It’s also being linked to the grocer’s new owner, Amazon, during a sensitive transition time when companies are working to integrate their brands.

Amazon wants shoppers to see both it and Whole Foods as sharing a commitment to quality products, low prices and innovation. News like this,

however, threatens to drive a wedge between quality-focused Whole Foods and efficiency-at-all-costs Amazon.

Every grocer has to deal with shopper complaints about product quality, and in an age when many show their distress on social media, companies have developed strategies to address these concerns and to monitor broader trends. Whole Foods will most likely work to improve its image online.

It should also take a close look at its operations to see what could be causing this uptick in produce-related complaints.

It’s impossible to say what, if anything is at the root of the problem. What can be said with certainty, though, is that Amazon is streamlining Whole Foods’ buying operations. To many customers and industry observers, this represents a troubling “mainstreaming” of a company known for high-quality, hard-to-find niche and local products.

Time will tell if consumer sentiment toward the grocer continues to sour, or if Amazon can successfully bring a premium halo back to its stores especially the produce aisle.

Healthie.in becomes leading healthy food delivery brand in India

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ealthie.in has been announced as largest brand in healthy and fresh food delivery startups category within three months of its launch. Leading online healthy food delivery startup, Healthie.in offers fresh, nutritious and delicious food to customers in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. They are serving more than 25,000 customers through the platform.

Healthie offers a collection of All Day Breakfast, Salads, Soups, Juices, Smoothies and Healthy Desserts full meals like Super Sandwiches, Super Bowls and Super Thalis. Healthie is also listed as one of the top brands on online food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato.Customers can directly place orders on Healthie.in for home delivery.

Rajesh Sawhney, Founder of the start-up Healthie

in August 2017 to make India healthy by promoting healthy food and lifestyle. Currently, it has 13 kitchens across the country and will soon launch another 12 kitchens in next three months. He said, “the tremendous customer response to Healthie. in in the first quarter of launch fully validates our belief that India is on the cusp of a healthy food revolution. More and more people are looking at balancing their occasional indulgent meals with a regular diet of healthy food; however options available so far have been limited.

Healthie.in is our attempt to plug this gap with food that is as tasty as it is wholesome and fresh.

We wanted to break the myth that healthy food cannot be delicious, or that Indian food cannot be healthy. It offers special Indian thalis, beverages and desserts, with an overriding emphasis on taste and nutrition which has made it the number one brand in the fresh healthy food category.”

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

SNACKS NEWS

Haldiram reclaim top position as largest snack company in India (west and south) and Haldiram Bhujiawala (east).

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ith tough competition between players in food and beverage industry, snacks and namkeen maker Haldiram has once again claimed its top position in the country. After two decades, the company has raced ahead from Pepsi Co, another major snacks player. The consumers growing preference for namkeen over chips as resulted in the game shuffle.

Haldiram posted sales of Rs 4,224.8 crore in the year ended September compared with PepsiCo’s Rs 3,990.7 crore from brands such as Lay’s, Kurkure and Uncle Chipps, as per latest data from Nielsen. In comparison of Haldiram’s Rs 3,262 crore in 2016, PepsiCo’s sales were at Rs 3,617 crore.

As the overall market grew 17 per cent in the year; Haldiram’s raced ahead at nearly 30 per cent in contrast with 10-12 per cent during 201216. It added nearly Rs 1,000 crore of incremental sales in the year to September. Kamal Agarwal, fourth-generation member of Haldiram family said”There was a sharp increase in raw material prices for several snacking products, especially nuts. However, we maintained our price tag and absorbed losses, which helped us gain share not just from existing players but also the unorganised segment since the price differential narrowed down. Consumers are also correlating healthy food with Indian snacks and namkeen but chips are perceived to be unhealthy.”

Haldiram is split into three geographic entities — Haldiram manufacturing (north), Haldiram Foods

PepsiCo spokesperson said “In the salty snacks segment, we continue to be the leaders, which is also the fastest-growing category in overall snacks. In the western salty category, with strong double-digit growth, Lay’s has been our fastestgrowing food brand in the last year on account of premiumisation and innovation with Lay’s Maxx and Shapes. In the nachos category, we scaled our presence with the ‘Made in India’ Doritos, and the product is seeing strong preference and traction amongst consumers. We have further expanded our salty snacks portfolio last year with Kurkure Triangles that is growing in double digits.”

Branded namkeen varieties such as dal, chivra, bhujia and nuts have been increasing their contribution within the overall snacks market worth Rs 21,600 crore in the last few years. Traditional snacks now account for more than half the market with both multinationals and homegrown companies pushing namkeen into the market with attractive packaging and pricing.

Consumers have increased purchases of branded namkeen rather than unbranded products from local bakeries due to the hygiene factor, helping regional players gain share from Pepsi. For instance, Gujarat-based Balaji that clocked sales of Rs 2,121 crore in the year to September, is the second-largest in terms of individual brands after Haldiram followed by PepsiCo Lay’s and Kurkure.

Category Head at Parle Products, B Krishna Rao said “a large part of the unorganised market has shifted towards namkeen as companies have increased availability and affordability. Also, increased reach and new product launches especially by local players have been driving most of the growth.”

Burger King shows hiked sale while the rest of industry sale is stagnant Burger King’s sales grew mainly due to three reasons — all burgers are grilled similar to an Indian-style tandoor which is healthy, second was the pricing and third it offer the largest vegetarian menu within QSR.

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n its second year in India Burger King, grew 69 per cent to post sales of Rs 237 crore during FY 2017 when most quick-service restaurants were struggling with stagnant sales. In the 201617 fiscal, the company generated average sales of Rs 2.7 crore from each of its 88 outlets opened till March, while its rival Westlife Development, that runs McDonald’s in the south and west, posted average sales of Rs 3.6 crore from each outlet.

Burger King, however, achieved up higher numbers than Jubilant Food Works, where average sales per outlet were at Rs 2.1 crore from both brands, Domino’s Pizza and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Burger King’s losses rose to Rs 62 crore during last fiscal, compared with Rs 38 crore a year ago, as the company doubled its store count. Burger King, that now runs more than 100 stores in India, claims it is now profitable at both the store and company level.

Burger King, that is popular for its Whopper burger, entered India in November 2014 when most quick-service restaurants were struggling with falling sales. There was a slight revival last fiscal but the overall market continued to face challenges, compounded further by demonetisation announced in November which saw consumers reduce discretionary spending. The 65-year-old burger chain partnered Everstone Capital in India, which holds a majority stake in the company through subsidiary F&B Asia Venture.

It has lined up $100 million for expansion over the next few years and expects to open at least 40-45 restaurants in India in the next few years. In addition, the segment also saw the entry of global companies including Wendy’s and Johnny Rockets, offering customers a wider cuisine range.

For instance, Westlife Development grew SSG at 4 per cent while Jubilant saw a 2.4 per cent decline in SSG last fiscal. Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee retailer, posted its slowest sales growth of 14 per cent in India last year.

Better days on the way for fast food industry in India

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fter demonetisation and GST implementation India’s quick service restaurant (QSR) business had a long struggle session. Hundreds of QSR and cafe outlets shut between 2013 and 2016 through the reckless expansion of 2015.

Now, they have sprung back, incited by the unexpected challenges. Smaller stores, more food innovations, moving out of high streets and greater focus on same-store sales growth (SSG) are driving a recovery.

SSG is the best financial metric to check the health of a QSR company as it shows a difference in revenue generated by a chain’s outlets over a certain period, often a quarter as compared with an identical period last year.

Despite a bounce-back in the second quarter for India’s largest pizza brand, posting a positive SSG of 4.2 per cent, the recovery was tenuous. The pizza, and the larger QSR story, it seemed, were to be sliced apart.

However, for the first two quarters of fiscal 2018, Domino’s made a comeback to positive 6.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent SSG(Same-store Sales Growth has Picked Up in Most Chains).

Profit after tax (PAT) of Jubilant FoodWorks, the master franchisee of American pizza brand Domino’s and donut label Dunkin’ Donuts, leapfrogged from a meager Rs. 6.72 crore in March 2017 to Rs 48.5 crore.

Westlife Development which operates McDonald’s restaurants in western and southern India, similarly saw a stronger September quarter on the back of higher SSG at 8.4 per cent from 1.7 per cent of Q2 2016, making it nine consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth.

KFC India, the local arm of the American burger giant has seen five consecutive quarters of positive system sales growth. Mad Over Donuts, the largest donut player in terms of store count, also reported an upswing in SSG, averaging 14 per cent over the last three quarters.

If the bulk of a company’s revenue increase comes from opening new stores, it could be that the de-

mand for a company’s product is flattening out and that it will plateau once the company reaches a saturation point in terms of total locations. That’s why a positive SSG shows the strong business fundamentals of a company.

United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects 2018 estimated India will grow at 7.2 per cent in 2018 and accelerate to 7.4 per cent in the following year on robust private consumption, public investment and structural reforms, though the risk of sudden capital withdrawal on account of monetary policy normalization in developed countries remained.

An uptick in consumer sentiment and improving GDP is what the doctor ordered for an ailing food industry overwhelmingly dependent on thisdent on discretionary spend.

In spite of the early signs of revival, food entrepreneurs are careful to temper their optimism. Getting government approvals, permissions and overall rules and regulations governing the F&B industry continue to be a big constraint.

Food analysts caution that QSR might hit speed breakers if fundamental issues are not resolved.

Though the QSR industry has managed to hold on to its appeal to millennials and the older generations, globally carbonated soft drinks contribute 25-30 per cent of the business level gross margin and this does not include pouring charges and the advertising support that Coke and Pepsi dole out.

Minimum wage plus hiring-to-retention costs in the top eight cities are rising more than revenue growth, and this is impacting industry’s profitability by 50-60 basis points annually.

Even after taking into account that 10-12 per cent of the revenue comes from the delivery business, in-store dining productivity is declining at an average rate of 4 per cent year-on-year since 2014.

Consumers’ desire for healthier food and smaller portions has led to heightened volatility.

Generation-Z (people born in or after 2000) is not looking at QSRs favourably and there are 260 million of them in India. The QSR legacy is under pressure and it is happening globally.

Britannia aims to capture rural markets in 3 years for better revenue

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iscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd is charting out several plans as it eyes the rural market as key focus areas for the future, in a bid to push revenue contribution from those regions to gain 30-35 per cent over the next 2-3 years.

Rural India currently accounts for more than 20 per cent of the company’s total revenue. With the motive of expanding their direct reach, Britannia has already set up 13,000 stock points—distribution points from where it supplies to shops in surrounding areas across rural markets.

Britannia’s Vice-President of Sales, Gunjan Shah said “rural is where the headroom is and there are many programmes that the government is driving on that front.

I think there is going to be far more momentum that will come from there. Disposable incomes will go up and consumers’ appetite for better products will also go up.”

The biscuit maker has tried innovative packaging options to improve sales in rural areas, especially of premium biscuit brands like Good Day and

Marie Gold, It sells smaller packs of these brands that cost Rs5-10 and piloted a few marketing campaigns in the rural markets.

Shah added that “One thing we are looking at doing is ensure that we develop awareness and activation at the local level in those villages. We can activate weekly markets where we can set up stalls and make them aware of our products like cream biscuits and brands like Tiger.” Britannia will run branding campaigns in rural markets for the first time.

Along with increasing sales in rural market in India, the company is also working on to increase penetration and market share in the Hindi belt (Rajasthan and Gujarat, to Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh).Britannia has to strategically their moves in these regions that are mainly dominated by Parle Products Pvt. Ltd and several region-specific brands.

The rural market should be viewed as two sets of consumers in India—the rural middle and upper class, and the rural mass. Marketing campaigns need to be tailored to both segments in order to be more effective.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

SEA FOOD NEWS

West Coast firm partners with AKVA Group

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Kuwait’s ban on Indian shrimp will not impact India’s seafood sector

estCoast Group has announced partnership with Norway-based aquaculture technology firm AKVA Group. Mumbai-based WestCoast built itself up based on expertise in frozen prawns, sold under the Cambay Tiger brand.

“The local assembly suitable for Indian conditions will bring down the costs by more than 50 percent and make it affordable to Indian farmers. The innovation will help Indian farmers to be globally competitive and ensure quality produce meeting sustainability standards,” he said.

They sell an estimated 800,000 kg of prawns a year andwith more than 500 employees and a sales footprint reaching through the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.WestCoast Board Director Rahul Kulkarni announced the AKVA partnership at Norway’s Aqua Nor conference in October. As part of the agreement, WestCoast will use AKVA technology to increase its own yields, and will also market AKVA aquaculture products to smaller-scale farmers in India.

AKVA Group Senior Vice President Trond Severinsen said the partnership with WestCoast opens up broad and potentially lucrative opportunities for his company in Asia.“Although most of our business has been, and still is, in the salmon industry, our technology has been exported to more than 65 countries and for a wide variety of species for many decades.

Kulkarni said “We are quite excited to announce that we are entering into this partnership with the world’s leading aquaculture technology company, AKVA Group. Norway and salmon are, of course, very different from India, but we see great opportunities to adapt many products and solutions to our local needs of developing countries, across species.In time, India will also develop its offshore marine farming, using the Norwegian model with large scale cages and feed barges, and this is also very much in our plans in India, sooner than later.”

WestCoast’s will use and market AKVA’s new MC-250 modular cage that’s specially designed for tilapia farming in lakes, rivers, and sheltered marine sites – all popular sites for aquaculture development in India.“Unlike the conventional metal cages, which take weeks for installation, MC-250 modular cage is user-friendly, as any farmer can conveniently install and dismantle in a water body in a few hours. Also, [the] cages do not corrode, are more environmentally sustainable, and more productive with minimal maintenance,” Kulkarni said.

The dissemination of AKVA technology is beginning with WestCoast’s own farms – the firm has set up 250 AKVA-designed cages at the Varasgaon and Panshet reservoirs near Pune. It has plans to produce 10,000 tons of tilapia from these two locations in the next 12 to 18 months.

“With this partnership with AKVA Group, our objective is to mechanize and improve fish and shrimp farm facilities across India and around the developing world,” Kulkarni said.

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In order to meet the needs of aquaculture in India and around [Asia], we are both adapting existing products and inventing brand new ones. We also see there is a good potential to mechanize the feeding processes in India’s shrimp-farming sector, using our well-known Akvasmart Central Feed Systems.

Such innovation will help reduce production costs and improve growth and farming performance for farmers in India, as it has for salmon and finfish in other markets.”

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eafood exporters have considered the reported ban imposed by Kuwait on Indian shrimps insignificant as it will not affect country’s seafood basket. “It is hardly anything and not even worth talking about,” said a leading seafood exporter when asked on the impact on the ban. Kuwait is not a major market and it imports only a limited quantity from India and even if there is a ban, it will not affect the seafood sector.

Reports state that Kuwait had imposed a ban on imports of fresh, chilled, frozen and processed shrimps from India and Texas due to some suspected cases of diseases. On the contrary, the seafood export group is hopeful for 10-15 per cent growth this season that will help India cross the $6-billion mark this fiscal.

They attribute the better performance to good Vannamei crop and robust demand. Already up to September, trade has registered 16 per cent and there has been a revival in demand from major importers, especially from the US and South-East Asia.

The Christmas season also adds to the demand.

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hailand accounts for about 13 per cent of 1.70 billion dollar exports made to South East Asia. South East Asia has share of about 30 per cent of the 5.7 billion dollar India seafood exports market. Thailand is an emerging market for Indian shrimp products but as of now it has temporarily terminated import of Shrimps from India creating mayhem for Indian seafood exporters.

Kulkarni said “Encouragement of inland aquaculture helps to limit the over-exploitation and dependence on seas and oceans for food. Aquaculture also helps in managing protein deficiency of the nation by increasing fish production and making it more accessible and affordable to the masses.

Thailand has been a vibrant market with high potential for mutual collaborations in the food processing sector. It is a setback for the seafood industry. It is surprising that the government here is not aware of it.This shock has come at a time when the European Union (EU), the third largest market of Indian exporters, has flagged off quality issues with India prompting the former to send an audit team to inspect the facilities .

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There was a growing concern that the EU is seriously worried over the use of antibiotics in Indian shrimps- a fact that has surfaced continuously in its findings. It is also dissatisfied with the response it got from the Indian authorities and is, thus, con-

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An exporter and owner of online seafood store Daily Fish, warned that depending on a single product (70 per cent of India’s seafood export demand was met from a single product) poses a risk in the wake of any possible crop loss. Therefore, there is need for de-risking the portfolio.

Founder Chairman, WestCoast Group, a fully integrated seafood exporter,Kamlesh Gupta pointed out that the US continues to be one of the largest markets for India and the trend will continue. Due to the EU’s issues with the quality of shrimps from India, the country will see a decline in exports to the Continent. Thanks to India’s processing facilities and quality production, Japan is once again looking to India for quality shrimps. “We see Japan as a market opening up for India in a big way in the near future.”

Setback for Indian seafood exporters as Thailand suspends shrimps import

India has the potential to tap 4.5 million hectares of freshwater resources for fish production. The government must continue its strong push to increase fish production, given evidence that more state governments are leasing out their water bodies for aquaculture and the fact that the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development offers easy access to credit for companies wishing to set up fish farms.

India has set a target of 150 million tons of fish production by the 2019-20 FY up from 107 million tons produced during 2015-16. By utilizing their products and technologies, this partnership with AKVA will help us achieve a major share in fish production.”

It may be recalled that the robust demand for frozen shrimp had enabled seafood exports to touch 11.34 lakh tonnes worth $5.70 billion in FY17; 6570 per cent of the export basket comprised Vannamei shrimps.

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sidering a ban. Export of Shrimps to Thailand is not taking place for last three months, said the sources. It has also suspended import of Shrimps from Malaysia.

The action of suspension by the Department of Fishery, Thailand is to prevent the Infectious Myonecrosis (IMNV) spreading as per the guidelines of World Organization for Animal Health.

Last year, the EU had strengthened its inspection norms for aquaculture products sent from India.

Earlier, the norm was testing samples from at least 10 per cent of the consignments, which was enhanced to 50 per cent in 2016.

Private players should contribute to meet annual fish demand

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o ensure that annual fish demand is met, there is a need of contribution from private players in this industry, a statement from West Bengal Fisheries department said. To meet the projected annual demand of 20 lakh metric tonnes of fish by 2019-20, private players must contribute from their share. There was a discussion held on ‘Agri-business opportunities in West Bengal’ organised by Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

Department of Fisheries Secretary Dr Ravi Inder Singh said, “Current annual demand of close to 17.8 lakh metric tonnes is set to reach 20 lakh metric tonnes by 2019-20. This is an area where private players can come in as well as the fishermen’s cooperatives and fisheries. Government is ready to cooperate.” last year more than 1 lakh metric tonnes fish was exported and the department hopes that the export potential of 3 lakh MT can be achieved.

A fishery hub is at Moyna where the yield is much more than average. “We wish there could be more such projects,” Singh added.

Secretary, Food Processing, Industries and Horticulure, Nandini Chakravorty said, India is the second largest vegetable producer in the world; West Bengal is the second largest vegetable producer.

“We have prepared an agri-horticulture blueprint for state where we have identified the gaps in infrastructure and in this sector, we invite private partnership, private investments on their own.”

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

DAIRY NEWS

Amul make innovative plans for Dairy sector to touch 15 per cent dairy industry to attract youth CAGR till 2020

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mul will soon launch innovative programmes like ‘cow to consumer’ to make dairy sector ‘cool and commercially viable’ for today’s youth that are going towards cities and hesitant to join the milk industry, MD of Amul, R.S Sodhi said. “In 1970, per capita of milk consumption in India was 111 gm and today it is 350 gm, it is growing at the rate of 2 per cent per annum. The demand for milk by 2050 would touch 540 million litres and to meet India’s demand in the coming years there is a need to make the dairy industry commercially viable for India’s youth.

By 2050, 50 per cent of India would be urbanised, which means that we would have more mouths to feed and less hands to produce. In case of shortage of milk, we would become dependent on milk from edible oil and pulses.”

What is required is how to make dairy ‘contemporarily cool’ and ‘commercially viable’ business for today’s youth who attracted to cities and do not want to join the dairy industry, he said on the sidelines of the International conference on SouthSouth and Triangular Cooperation. “We are trying mordernise dairy farming using milking machines instead of hand milking; we are also using bulk milk coolers, modern sheds, modern watering system etc. The idea behind propagating a commercial dairy farm is to attract todays youth,” Sodhi said.

Listing, the programmes introduced by the company to modernise dairy farming, Amul MD stated that the biggest innovation that Amul is bringing in India’s dairy industry is through Cow to Consumer.

Under this programme, Amul creates a digital account for a farmer. When a farmer goes to deposit milk at a collection centre, the quality and quantity of milk is assessed and updated on the card that comes with the account. Based on the quantity and quality, money is transferred to the account of the farmer immediately which could be accessed by him through a mobile app. “We have opened more than 26 lakh such digital accounts for farmers in the last few months and 40 to 45 per cent farmers have been covered under the scheme. One of the main reasons for introducing such schemes was to make the dairy industry attractive for the tech-savvy youth.”

Another programme aimed to attract youth is dairy entrepreneurship scheme under which youth can go for a farm size of 20-30 cows and buffaloes and it would be easily financed by the banks with Amul marketing for it. “One would earn Rs 40,000 per month through commercial dairy farming which in many cases is more than the amount you would earn in urban India,” he said.

India a country of small holder farmers, Sodhi added that the youth of this country need to realize that animal husbandry is a very attractive business at this time when the land is shrinking and population is increasing. “We need to be able to increase milk productivity on reduced number of farms with the shrinking of land, then only we will be able to meet India’s increasing demands and the country’s youth has a very important role to play in taking the dairy industry of the country forward.”

IVF techniques can improve productivity of breed: Dairy experts

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n the 10th National Livestock Championship & Expo-2017 organised by the Punjab Government’s Department of Animal Husbandry, a seminar on “Sustainability of indigenous cattle under Indian conditions” was held. The seminar was chaired by Prof PK Uppal, Dr Amarjit Singh, Director, Animal Husbandry, Punjab, and Dr SNS Randhawa, Professor, Khalsa College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Amritsar.

Dr Parampal Singh, veterinary surgeon, Polyclinic Bathinda, gave a presentation on breed characteristics and morphology of indigenous (Indian) breeds like Sahiwal and Gir. He highlighted the tolerant nature of these breeds under environmental conditions of the state. He also elucidated benefits of breeding and management of these breeds.

Dr Mark Smith gave information about technical expertise about in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in indigenous cattle to improve the productivity and production of the breeds. IVF techniques could in-

crease the conception rate and milk production in indigenous cattle in the state. This will lead to early breed improvement with respect to breed characters’ improved milk yield and conception rates.

Edward W Bresnyan, Senior Agriculture Economist, World Bank, US, laid emphasis on the global status of animal husbandry. He said India was the largest milk producer in the world as well as animal population (herd size). World Bank supports 18 states, including Punjab, as per National Dairy Project-1 Scheme.

In the session, Dr JK Jena, Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), made members aware of the role of ICAR in selection and conservation of indigenous breeds to increase their productivity.

Lastly, Randhawa stressed on management aspect of indigenous cattle rearing through proper nutrition and management.

MooCow to enter Indian market this year

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alaysian yogurt brand MooCow is planning to spread its wings in India in upcoming financial year. The brand is known for its ice-creams, frozen yogurt and yogurt drinks. MooCow enters India in partnership with FranGlobal, the overseas arm of franchise solutions company Franchise India Holdings Ltd. FranGlobal shall be the master franchise of the brand with an investment of USD 2 lacs in marketing and advertising MooCow in the country.

With a plan to open 100 stores each certain will be franchised in the top 10 cities over the next five years. MooCow will explore three retail formats—700-1,000 sq. ft flagship outlets, smaller 500 sq. ft outlets and kiosks. Chief Executive Officer, FranGlobal, Venus Barak said “These will be dairy-heavy products. We will be setting up production units in mega metro and metro cities.

Overall, Rs100-200 crore will be invested in the

store openings.”

Director at MooCow, Sandra Too said “We haven’t expanded overseas till now. After eight years, we believe that the brand is mature enough to be taken outside Malaysia. Our unique selling point is our healthy fresh products that people want.”

In the year ended December 2016, MooCow earned 5 million Malaysian ringgit in revenue.

The company expects the India launch to drive up revenue by 25 per cent. MooCow shall face competition with independent yogurt brands like Cocoberry, Red Mango and YogurtBay. MooCow has operations in Malaysia and China and was launched in 2010. The company also plans to enter Indonesia and Vietnam. MooCow’s entry in India is the right time as the country is the largest dairy producer in the world and that yogurt space is an emerging segment.

domestic dairy sector are also expected to further augment milk productivity. India’s milk production is likely to surpass global production and grow at a similar 4.2 per cent CAGR to 185 million MT per annum, and exceed EU to emerge the largest dairy producer by 2020.

ndia has achieved a lot since 1970 from being deficient in milk production at 20 million MT to becoming the world’s largest milk producer at 160 million MT, accounting for 18.5 per cent of global milk production. The dairy sector in India is expected to reach 15 per cent compounded annual growth (CAGR) over 2016-20 and attain value of Rs 9.4 trillion on rising consumerism.

Per capita milk consumption in India has also been increasing at 3 per cent CAGR as compared to 1 per cent CAGR globally.

The report also said that there is huge scope for per capita milk consumption in India to shoot led by growth in value-added products (VADP), which is at 34 per cent of industry versus 86 per cent for the global mature markets like EU. India has a potential of 15-30 per cent plus growth in VADP like cheese, whey, UHT milk over next few years.

Indian dairy industry is worth Rs 5.4 trillion by value grown at 15 per cent CAGR during 201016. Going ahead, the dairy industry is expected to maintain 15 per cent CAGR over 2016-20, and attain value of Rs 9.4 trillion on rising consumerism, the report said.

Led by rising disposable income, and growing consumer preference for branded and value-added milk and milk products, investments by organised players also in the sector has been on the rise.

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Further, India is expected to emerge as the largest dairy producer by 2020. The Union government implemented the Central Scheme National Dairy Plan - Phase 1 during 2012-17 to improve productivity of dairy cooperatives through several input activities. Investments by private players in the

The report pointed out that other top milk producing geographies like EU, USA, China, Pakistan are expected to grow their production volumes at 2 per cent growth over 2020, which is lower than India’s growth estimates.

VADP leads to growth in dairy business despite volatility in milk procurement prices

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ue to high margin value-added products (VADP) and a good product portfolio, the Indian dairy industry is seeing a steady growth in business despite volatility in milk procurement prices over the past couple of years.

This was mainly because of improved revenues from VAD products that companies such as Parag, Heritage and Dodla, among others were able to absorb some 1027 per cent price rise in milk procurement.

According to industry analysts, VAD products enjoy margins of around 25-45 per cent, against low margins of 6-8 per cent that liquid milk entailed and at present, companies such as Parag, Heritage and Prabhat derive nearly 64, 24 and 26 per cent of their revenues from VADP segment respectively, and are looking to further increase its share.

Additionally, companies are concentrating on increasing share of revenues from VADP to over 50 per cent to drive growth, apart from increasing their market coverage. This, industry participants and analysts anticipate should also help increase the share of the organised dairy industry to 26 per cent by 2020 from 22 per cent in 2016.

But at the same time the dairy industry is under pressure due to an inflationary trend in milk pro-

curement prices, especially in the private sector.

Many state governments like Telangana and Karnataka have extending subsidies of Rs 4-5 a litre to the milk farmers, forcing many private dairies to match the procurement prices.

However, a few dairies like Dodla dairy have not raised procurement prices and instead prefer to bank on their long-standing relations with the loyal dairy farmers through initiatives such as timely payments and supply of inputs at subsidised costs, among others.

Numerous dairies are viewing to increase their network of direct procurement of milk from farmers intended at reducing volatility in procurement prices and also bring in competences.

While Amul and Hatsun stand at 100 per cent direct milk procurement, it is 95 per cent, 85 per cent and 80 per cent for Heritage, Dodla and Parag, respectively.

It is expected that the organised Indian dairy industry will grow rapidly at 20 per cent per annum, doubling into a Rs 2.5 lakh crore market by 2020, led by increasing consumption of value-added products.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

CORPORATE NEWS

Create a panel to monitor project implementation: ASSOCHAM

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ndustry body ASSOCHAM urged the Uttarakhand government to form a special investment monitoring task force to ensure timely and effective implementation of projects worth over Rs 2 lakh crore. ASSOCHAM Secretary General D S Rawat said, “Speeding up implementation of projects through target setting must be the mandate and the chief minister should immediately constitute a committee of senior ministers and bureaucrats to oversee pace of projects implementation and address environmental, land acquisition and other related issues.

The state should accord more importance to implementing investment intentions as even if about half of these get implemented, it would help create 30,000 direct and indirect jobs across the state in the next five years.”

He also released an ASSOCHAM study titled Uttarakhand: Economic Growth and Investment Performance Analysis. The state government must focus on upskilling the people thereby making them more employable as that would help deal with challenges of growing migration to greener pastures in search of jobs.

Uttarakhand’s economy has grown at 7.1 per cent CAGR between FY12 and FY17, higher than the national average of 6.9 per cent clocked during the same period. Though agriculture and allied activities is the mainstay of over 51 per cent of the states total workforce as per Census 2011, the sectors contribution to its economy declined from 12.3 per cent in FY12 to 8.9 per cent in FY17.

The contribution of industrial sector to Uttarakhand’s economy has remained at about 52 per cent during both FY12 and FY17, but the state has topped in terms industrial sector growth by clocking a CAGR of 7.3 per cent during the period.

ASSOCHAM report said promotion of food processing industries bolsters sector-specific infrastructure like warehouses, cold storages and others to avoid spoilage of perishable products will further strengthen the industrial scenario of Uttarakhand,.

Terming the states performance in services sector as encouraging, it suggested that policymakers should aim for expanding segments like tourism and IT.

McDonald’s India to appoint a licensee partner for the north and east India region

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ast food giant McDonald’s India may soon appoint a licensee partner for the north and east India region after months of intense battle with its Indian joint venture partner Vikram Bakshi. “We are actively progressing towards finding the right Developmental Licensee partner for the region so that we can grow the business and rebuild the McDonald’s brand,” a McDonald’s India spokesperson said.

Sources in the know said the US-based food chain has finalised the criteria for selection of licensee partner and would come out with a name probably in a couple of months.

It was widely speculated that Hardcastle Restaurants, which runs McDonald’s stores in the west and south, is the front runner for the job. However, there are other players who are keen to grab the license in the region, considering the high profit margins at which McDonald’s outlets operate.

In August this year, McDonald’s had terminated franchise agreement for 169 out of its 430 fastfood outlets operated by Bakshi-led Connaught Plaza Restaurant Ltd (CPRL) in north and east India, alleging breach of contract terms and payment default by the operator.

Post franchise agreement termination, both the sides are locked in a protracted legal battle at various courts, including National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and the Delhi high court.

Bakshi has challenged the termination, continues to operate the outlets saying he will run them until there is an amicable solution by the courts or an acceptable offer by McDonald’s to buyout of his stake in CPRL. But according to McDonalds these restaurants (McDonald’s outlets being run by Bakshi) need to be closed immediately and it is taking steps to exercise its contractual and legal rights.

As per the termination notice, CPRL was ceased to use McDonalds’s name, system, trademark, designs and its associated intellectual property, and the company said it is not aware of the food and safety standards as the outlets being run are unauthorised.

Since the termination, MIPL has not been able to verify if these unauthorized McDonald’s restaurants are following operational procedures and controls, supplies and safety standards.

Gulfood 2018 to Consolidate UAE’s Lead Role in Global Food Agenda

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ccording to the exhibition organizers, Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), the 2018 edition of Gulfood, the world’s largest annual food and beverage trade event and the first major international food industry trade show of the year will further strengthen the UAE’s lead role in setting the global food agenda.

Citing the long-established reputation of Gulfood as a key driver in fostering innovation across the local, regional and global food and beverage supply chain, DWTC officials revealed on-site sales generated by 95,000-plus buyers and visitors at Gulfood 2018 which runs from 18-22 February will contribute heavily to a global food market expected to generate revenues of USD3.03 trillion by 2020, as per a survey done recentlty by Dublin-based market research company.

With the global food market due to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.5 per cent from 2015 to 2020, the UAE food and beverage market alone is anticipated to reach a valuation of AED82 Billion (USD22 billion) by the end of the decade, according to Euromonitor International.

In attracting the Middle East’s largest trade industry audience, generating huge transactional volumes every year on the show floor, and setting global foodstuff commodity prices, Gulfood is the region’s premier food and beverage industry platform – it underlines Dubai’s leading role in the global food sector, said Trixie LohMirmand, Senior Vice President, Exhibitions & Events, DWTC.

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

SPICES NEWS

Nutrition industry gives its verdict Aquamin and charcoal are trending as potential gut-health ingredients on new rules for novel foods

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any people working in the nutrition industry feel positive about the EU’s new process for the approval of novel foods, new research by the organisers of Vitafoods Europe shows. However, experts are warning that there could be adverse implications for some companies’ intellectual property portfolios.

The new regulations on novel foods, defined as anything without a significant history of consumption in the EU before 15 May 1997, come into force on 1 January 2018. For the first time, the approval system will be centralised with applications submitted to the European Commission rather than individual member states.

There appears to be a degree of optimism about the new regime. A fifth (20 per cent) of industry professionals surveyed by the organisers of Vitafoods Europe said they thought the new rules would have a positive impact. This was double the number who expected them to have a negative impact (10 per cent).

More than a quarter of respondents (27 per cent) said they had already taken action to prepare for the new rules, while 17 per cent said they were now more likely to apply for novel foods status compared with 12 per cent who said they were less likely to do so.

A quicker process Reforming the novel foods regulation is intended to streamline and speed up the application process.

“The biggest problem with the old system was time” said Liza Van Den Eede, Regulatory Affairs Director at Pen & Tec Consulting, presents an up-

date on the new process at Vitafoods Europe 2018.

“It took an average of three and a half years to get a novel food approval and in some cases it was five or even six. The better defined deadlines in the new process, as well as the guidance from EFSA, should hopefully mean faster approvals. However, there are probably many companies that are pessimistic about the timescales based on past experience with EFSA, since unforeseen supplementary information requests can slow down the process considerably.”

Patrick Coppens, Director of Scientific & Regulatory Affairs at Food Supplements Europe, added: “On paper this is a very nice process. It’s more streamlined, it’s clearer and it should be faster. But like all legislation, the proof of pudding is in the eating.”

Intellectual property concerns Another key change is that authorisations will be generic. This means that once a novel food is approved it will in most cases be authorised for anyone to market. “Of course, that’s not an incentive for companies to invest in a lot of safety investigations for the product. It will really depend on what companies can do to protect their intellectual property. If the return on investment is not certain, there will be some companies who don’t invest,said Patrick Coppens.

Dr Steffi Dudek, Senior Scientific Consultant at analyze & realize, also expressed concerns. “The new regulations certainly represent progress for traditional foods from third countries or for relatively simple products – exotic berries for example. But manufacturers of innovative synthetic or fermented ingredients who got authorisation under the old regulation after investing heavily in research will be disappointed that their proprietary data is not respected in the way we had hoped. I’m also concerned that some products that should be subject to their own authorisation might enter the EU market under a generic authorisation. It remains to be seen how companies will take the responsibility to assess the status of their products.”

Regional dishes do not flourish because of ‘comfort zone’ cuisine ed and we do not know how to sell our regional food better like the US does.”

About Indian dishes coming into eminence across the globe, the chefs believed that many efforts in this direction go unrecognised. Anand said “India has been a leading exporter of spices and ingredients. We’ve given everything that has made every other cuisine tastier and yet we are deprived.”

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wide range of regional cuisine exists in India but several of them do not reach restaurants tables because the chefs prefer to stay in their ‘comfort zone’ when crafting their menus. Michelin star Chef Vikas Khanna, owner of ‘Junoon’ restaurant, New York along with several other prominent chefs were present at HT Leadership Summit moderated by Chef Ritu Dalmia.

Chef Gaggan Anand known for his culinary dishes made at his ‘Gaggan’ restaurant in Bangkok said, “We want to stay in a comfort zone. In restaurants also, most of the menus are played along with the dishes which are commonly accepted. More or less you will find Punjabi dishes given certain twists and turns in menu and presentation but the flavour remain the same. We are super domesticat-

Regarding government’s initiative to promote Indian cuisine abroad, both chefs had different views. Khanna commended the steps taken whereas Anand expressed disappointment with the government. Khanna said “Government, irrespective of political parties, has been supportive when it comes to promoting Indian delicacies.

If you see the advertisements of Incredible India you will find images of food. Even in the Presidential dinners, now-a-days chefs are invited to prepare special dishes which were not happening earlier.”

Anand pointed out that “government is not working hard enough to make the ingredients easily accessible abroad, they are not marketed well. It is easier to get US products in India but difficult to get Indian spices in other countries.

A

quamin is a trademarked multi-mineral formula made from red seaweed that can help keep a healthy digestive barrier in the stomach that helps thwart chronic GI inflammation. The trademark owner is an Irish company that has been studying Aquamin applications in gluten-free and regular breads, ice cream, rice, pasta and cereal bars.

role by binding itself to poison and keeping the poison from entering the bloodstream. However, as the University of Utah pointed out, more research is needed into exactly how it works. Charcoal can also bind to consumed foods and block the absorption of both nutrients and medications.

When added to food, it has a smoky and earthy flavor.

Activated charcoal is showing up in black coldpressed juices, coffee, baked goods, ice cream and other products and is said to help with digestive health, reduce cholesterol and remove impurities from the body.

Burger King was an earlier pioneer in using activated bamboo charcoal by launching a “kuro burger” in selected outlets in Japan in 2012. This product featured a patty inside a sliced black bun, including a sliver of black cheese and a black sauce made from squid ink. They were a big hit with Japanese customers and outsold all other new products the company offered that year. However, the restaurant’s big sales likely came more from the sandwich’s visual impact and smoky taste and less from the possibility of improved gut health.

Gut health is becoming more important for consumers. Consequently, the number of food and beverage products making digestive health claims is growing. The global market for digestive products grew 12 per cent between 2012 and 2017, the report stated.

Aquamin contains calcium magnesium and trace minerals and is believed to help limit chronic gut inflammation and support joint health. It is considered a versatile ingredient for adding calcium to food. Activated charcoal plays a much different

Gut-healthy foods and beverages show no sign of slowing entry into the global marketplace. As long as people want to improve their digestive health, they will seek out these products. Though Aquamin, activated charcoal are trendy now.

Indian spices likely to lose global importance

I

n the next few years, Indian spices will lose their prominence in the international market because of low output. In a report placed in the Rajya Sabha, it said that despite initiatives taken by the government, the productivity of spices in India remained ‘low and uncompetitive’ to meet the increasing global demand.

Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce said in its report on ‘Activities and Functioning of Spices Board’, “there is a plethora of programmes being implemented by the Spices Board and Agriculture Ministry for the development of spices in India and the quantum of production of spices sector is praiseworthy, but there still exists a lack of exportable surplus of spices.”

The report noted that considering the several natural advantages that India possessed, the production of spices should be in surplus to meet the increasing global demand. Lack of quality planting materials, small sized land holdings, pest and disease

occurrences, climate fluctuation, presence of old and senile plants in the case of perennial crops, lack of irrigation facilities are the major challenges in increasing the productivity in spices sector.

The report further added that production of small cardamom had decreased in 2016-17 compared to the previous year, whereas the increase in production of large cardamom was not considerable enough to be happy about. It directed the Spices Board to take necessary action to improve production. It also recommended transfer of production and development of five major spices turmeric, pepper, chilli, ginger and garlic to the Spices Board on lines of cardamom.

The committee also recommended the Commerce Department to accelerate the constitution of Spices Board since the tenure of several members had terminated. The Board lacked adequate representation from the Northeast and asked the department to take appropriate steps to increase their representation.

Karnataka submit proposal of quality control, testing lab for spices

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own in Southern regions, where spices are in plenty and is even exported to other states and countries, there is a need to establish testing laboratory for impurities.

Karnataka State Spices Development Board (KSSDB) has proposed to set up a state-of-the-art quality control and testing laboratory for spices in the State.

Chairperson of KSSDB Shashikala Kavali in a meet said that Rs.150 crore proposal has been submitted to the government for this purpose. The proposed quality control and testing laboratory would be modelled along the lines of the one set by the Spice Board of India in Kochi that includes set up of processing centres for pepper, cardamom and turmeric.

The state of Karnataka is the only Southern state to

have its own spice development board. Although several varieties of spice are grown here, the farmers depend on middlemen to market them. Karnataka has set the target to facilitate a direct marketing link between the producers and exporters. The inaugural session was followed by an interaction between farmers and exporters. Both groups discussed the terms and conditions for selling and buying the produce.

It was an encouraging response to see 28 exporters and 150 farmers participate in the meeting. Director of Spice Board of India, S. Siddaramappa appreciated the Karnataka government’s move to promote spice cultivation.

“Though spice is cultivated in different States, not all have set up such boards exclusively to promote spice cultivation. Spice Board of India will extend all possible help to the State Board.”

22

Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

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Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

FRUITS & VEGETABLE NEWS

For first time ever in J&K, banana Due to stringent global norms, fruit cultivated commercially fruit and vegetable exports drop proposes to work in tandem with Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) institutions like the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research and Central Institute of Subtropical Horticulture to get a robust scientific sea protocol developed for export by sea.

la Pharmaceutical Limited, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

The first trial of cultivation over two acres land of Field experimental farm Chatha has been successfully completed.”

J

ammu & Kashmir state is blessed with all kinds of fruits and is a net exporter to the rest of the country and abroad. However, the major fruit i.e. banana is imported to the tune of Rs. 200 crore per year.In order to bring commercial cultivation of banana in J&K, the CSIRIndian Institute of Integrative Medicine introduced a new biotechnology driven programme.

This work was jointly done by CSIR-IIIM, Jammu and Cadila Pharmaceutical, Ahmedabad.After full trial and established tissue culture and agriculture practice, Dr. Ram Vishwakarma, Director IIIM Jammu launched the J&K grown banana fruit.

Scientists have achieved an exceptional achievement after they successfully cultivated bananas in Jammu and Kashmir. For the first time, the experiment of growing bananas in Jammu and Kashmir has succeeded with precision.

Vishwakarma said “Experimental works involved growing the banana by tissue culture technique at Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) Jammu.

The samplings of this high quality tissue culture variety known as Bhim Grand Naine (G-9) banana were brought from Agro Division of Cadi-

First cultivation trial was conducted by planting 2000 samplings of banana plants with the narrow spacing in August 2016. The fruit setting commenced in July-August, 2017 while as the maturity and harvesting attained in 13 months.

“The plant grew to a height of 6.5 to 7.5 feet and gave yield 20-30 kg per plant and 20-25 tonnes/ acre. In term of economy involved, as per market analysis, price of banana in Jammu is approximately Rs. 20 per kg. Thus on an average, 20-30 Kg yield/plant gives Rs. 250-300/Banana plant.”

Approximately Rs. 2.5 lakh net return can be obtained by cultivation of this crop on one acre of land which is attractive business for farmers of the Jammu and Kashmir as it involves very less inputs but lucrative profit.

More than 164,000 acres of land in India is under the banana cultivation. Most edible banana species are widely cultivated in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Many wild species of banana are also reported from Northeast and South India.

Till date, no initiative of commercial cultivation of banana has been done in Jammu and Kashmir. Scientists said the commercial cultivation of banana in Jammu and Kashmir would be most profitable agriculture business for farmers of the State. This crop will be particularly suit Jammu region.

T

he strict quality norms on the global level have hit the Indian fruit and vegetables.

Indian fruits and vegetables are gradually losing their stand in global markets because of stringent quality norms of importing countries.As per data by Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) that indicates that India’s exports of fresh vegetables declined by 26.3 per cent to 1.44 million tonnes during April-October this year from 1.95 million tonnes in the corresponding period last year. India’s shipment of fresh fruit also declined 17 per cent to 321,220 tonnes in the first seven months of the current financial year compared to 386,063 tonnes in the same period last year.

APEDA Chairman D K Singh has drafted an export promotion strategy to boost shipments of APEDA-registered products. The strategy highlights the need for capacity building, appropriate branding, infrastructure upgrade, poor handling practices of consignments at exits, and improvements in trained manpower to address trade-related issues.

Singh said “Since air freight costs are exorbitant and have a direct bearing on export costs, APEDA

This is likely to reduce freight costs and improve exports. Also, APEDA proposes to plan promotion programmes in various potential and emerging markets in consultation with trade and the Indian Missions in target countries. Apart from that, buyer-seller meetings need to be organised regularly in target countries.”

The drop in India’s fruit and vegetables exports can be attributed to frequent changes in government’s norms. Thus, experts call for consistency in government policies to enable Indian exports to frame a long-term export strategy.Meanwhile, all large and small countries of the world have started adopting stringent quality norms set by the European Union. That has made India’s exports of fruit and vegetables difficult.Indian planters focus on quality improvement of exportable commodities with minimum pesticides residue limits as specified by importing countries. Canada opened up its market for Indian fruit and vegetables in August, has now relaxed inspection rates for grapes exports from India.

“By virtue of its wide-ranging agro-climatic zones, geographical location, long history of agricultural production and its extensive range of products, India has the potential to become ‘the outsourcing destination’ for agriculture and processed food products for the world, in addition to its famed information technology services,” Singh added.

India is second largest producer of horticultural crops projects and 2 All India Network projects are providing necessary technical cooperation and scientific research assistance to the horticulture mission.

R

esearch and development projects in horticulture crops have yielded results that have led to increased rate of horticulture crops production irrespective of adverse climatic conditions. Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh attended the World Orange Day 2017 event in Nagpur.

India is the second largest producer of horticultural crops and fruits, after China. More than 9 crore metric tons of fruits on 63 lakhs hectare land were produced during 2015-16. As per estimates, a production of 30 crore metric ton horticulture crops on 2.5 crore hectare land is expected during 2016-17 in which contribution of fruit is significant. The record achievement includes 42 million ton of fruit production on 65 lakh hectare land. In terms of area in India, the citrus fruits hold second position (10.37 lakh hectare) and third (12 million tonnes) in production.

The Agriculture Minister said the Ministry is implementing Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture across the nation. The School of Horticultural Sciences department of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), along with its 23 institutes, 11 All India Coordinated Research

Singh said that government established a Central Citrus Research Institute (CCRI) in Nagpur in 1985 with an objective to develop research and necessary techniques for citrus fruits and in 1986 it was upgraded to National Research Centre for Citrus. In 2014, the present central government upgraded this centre to the central institute. A sub-centre of the CCRI was established 42.4-acre land in 2017 in Biswanath Chariali in Biswanath district of Assam with an objective to accelerate the research and development work on citrus fruits in North Eastern states of the country.

ICAR is implementing All India Coordinated Fruits Crop Research Project in 10 centres of 8 states namely Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Karnataka.

The needs of the specific area, necessary research, technical training, and demonstration are being carried out on citrus fruits. In the last 4 years, the government has allocated a sum of Rs.23 crore for these centres.

Singh added that many schemes are being implemented for the integrated development of horticultural crops like informing farmers of advanced production techniques, promoting the processing and marketing of products to promote the export.

For this, 2 clusters will be developed in Amravati and Nagpur.

24

Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

TEA & COFFEE NEWS

Keen on pan-India presence, Goodricke counts on acquired brands

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oodricke Group Ltd plans to double its market share in the packaged tea segment after their recent acquisition of packet tea brands of Godfrey Philips Ltd (GPL). MD & CEO of Goodricke, A.N. Singh said “Right now, we have a large share of the market in Madhya Pradesh and a significant presence in West Bengal, Punjab and Haryana. We will leverage the acquired brands to strengthen our reach in Bihar, U.P., Jammu & Kashmir and in Maharashtra.

Goodricke acquired the packet tea brands owned

by Godfrey Philips (GPL) was incorporated in 1988, had recently sold its packet tea business to Goodricke in a Rs. 20-crore deal. Godfrey Philips had decided to exit packet tea business that contributed only 3 per cent to its revenue. In the quarter ended September 30, 2017 the company made

a loss in its tea and other retail products business.

Singh said that Goodricke aims to double its market share to 4 per cent within a year of operation, the deal which became effective November 1. Goodricke has begun retailing the acquired brands, sourcing the teas from its own gardens as well as through auctions.

Goodricke produces 8 million kg of tea annually at its gardens in Assam, Dooars and in Darjeeling, some of which are decades old. Their market presence in the packet tea market is mainly through some premium Darjeeling tea brands, green tea and CTC tea brands. It also sells through auctions and private deals. They plan to leverage the strong brand recall of Godfrey Philips brands in western and northern Indian markets where the brand has a strong presence especially in modern retail.

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Role of Tea Board to be altered: Union Commerce Ministry

U

nion Commerce Ministry plans to modify the guidelines relating to ‘future orientation’ of Tea Board India that is presently more of a subsidy disbursement organisation, an official said. Union Commerce Ministry’s Joint Secretary (Plantations), Santosh Sarangi present in 134th annual general meeting of Indian Tea Association in Kolkata.

“We keep hearing the thoughts of the future orientation of Tea Board. I personally feel that now we have entered a time when Tea Board has to move away from being a subsidy disbursement organisation to an organisation which is working with the industry on issues related to sustainability, higher quality and value addition and this should be the future orientation of Tea Board. In this connection, we thought of tweaking the guidelines to bring in these elements.”

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This is an industry generating thousands of crores of annual revenue does not need any subsidy. He also mentioned sometimes the cost of administering the subsidy outweighs the subsidy itself. He added “Frankly, an industry which is generating

Rs 15,000-Rs 17,000 crore every year doesn’t require a couple of crores of subsidy,” he said, adding that for example, in the rubber board, while it was seen to administer subsidy worth Rs 30 crore, the annual establishment cost was touching Rs 100 crore.”

The Ministry got Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) approval for Rs 685 crore for medium term framework till 2019 and that will help in clearing of a lot of earlier subsidies that are pending. Sarangi said there are some elements including research and development efforts, production related assistance where some amount of financial support has to continue.

Major focus for Tea Board would be to work on generic promotions, facilitate industry to set up tea lounges, boutiques, blending and packaging units outside India to push exports of Indian tea.

“Bringing the export focus back has to be one of the prime areas, and again in that, targeting the qualities that are sold, orthodox and green variety, is something we need to work on,” Sarangi added.

Kerala farmers works towards creating an organic green tea factory

F

armers in Kerala are planning to launch an organic tea factory. According to reports a group of farmers in Wayanad district may soon launch an organic green tea factory with a view to revive the sector.

Assistant General Manager of NABARD, Wayanad, N.S. Sajikumar said “The factory under the Wayanad Green Tea Producer Company, a collective of 147 small-scale tea growers envisions to ensure a sustainable income for farmers in the sector by avoiding middlemen.

Chief Executive Officer of the company, Jose Sebastian said “It also aims at produce and market speciality tea, like organic green tea at affordable prices. Over the past decade, the Tea Board of India has taken initiatives to motivate small-scale tea growers to work as collectives by forming producer-societies or self-help groups for sustainable green tea leaf trade. There are over 1,200 SHGs in the tea sector in the country, but most of them are left at the hands of bought-leaf factories in the

Gulfood Manufacturing

absence of any processing facilities.”

Five years ago, members of the Small Tea Growers Society at Karadippara and the Karshaka Jyothi Small Tea Growers Society at Vattachola in the district constituted the farmer producer company, with the support of NABARD to overcome exploitation in this sector. “Later we decided to set up a factory exclusively for green tea at Karadippara and tap the vast potential of organic green tea,” Sebastian said.

The farmers are getting only Rs. 11.50 a kg of green leaf. When the factory starts organic green tea leaf procurement, we can provide Rs. 30 a kg and incentives to them, he added. The factory has a capacity to process 1,200 kg of green tea leaf a day. It has been set up at a cost of Rs. 83 lakh, including Rs. 45.80 lakh as assistance from NABARD and Rs. 3 lakh as start-up grant of the State Industries Department.

SLN Coffee launches Levista brand

S

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L N Coffee, which has been selling coffee to domestic and overseas markets, launched instant coffee brand ‘Levista’ and aims to increase its revenue to Rs 1,100 crore.

The company had registered top-line of Rs 800 crore last year, SLN Coffee, Director, N Sathappan said they tried and tested over 50,000 cups of the blending before launching. SLN Coffee will be launching instant coffee Levista in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka initially as south is the largest market for coffee and in three years, a pan-India market presence is expected.

The group expects the top-line to touch Rs 1,100 crore with the launch of the ‘Levista’. SLN Coffee has a manufacturing unit in Coorg, Karnataka. The exports are over 10,000 tonnes every year.

25

Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

TEA & COFFEE NEWS

Coffee Chain Papparoti launched their First Café in Mumbai

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ising on international acclaim, popular coffee chain Papparoti recently opened its first café in city of Mumbai, first one in India. They decided to come to India because of the evening ‘tea and bun’ culture. The coffee chain was first launched in 2003 in Malaysia and

now has a global presence with cafes in Malaysia, Dubai, Indonesia, UK, Australia, China, Vietnam, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, and Bangladesh.

Co-founders Nitin and Kunal Jethwani said “We

Delegation from Tea Board to visit China

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delegation from Tea Board is likely to visit Beijing and Shanghai in China early this year to discuss trade meetings for the sector. Tea Board officials said that industry associations had been told to nominate their representatives for the delegation set to go in February 2018. The tour involves meeting the Chinese authorities; participate in buyer-seller interactions as well as tea-sampling.

Tea Board Chairman P K Bezbaruah said “while India is mostly a black tea producer, China is just the reverse. Just as there has been an increasing trend for consuming green tea in India as a health drink, the trend in China is just the opposite. Youngsters over there are showing an increasing preference for black tea. There are complementarities between the two countries as regards their tea consumption habits and this will be a good initiative”.

China imported 6.4 million kgs of black tea from India in the first 10 months of 2017 valued at Rs

Indian F&B has evolved drastically in the past few 115 crores. The unit price of this was Rs 180.8, which was in the higher price band. India imports a similar amount of green tea from China.

Data indicates that Kenya and China were among the world’s largest exporters.

China exported 262.5 million kgs between January and September 2017 while Kenya sent out 320.7 million kgs in this period. India’s exporters stood at 189.7 million kgs. A senior Tea Board official said “There is scope of India increasing its exports as there is a market for premium teas and black tea based beverages in China.”

The Indian Embassies will also be associated with this endeavour. India and China are among the world’s largest tea producers. While India’s annual output averages at about 1,200 million kgs, China’s production is estimated at about 2,300 million kgs. Tea is grown in China mostly on small holdings of land.

Teesta River launch Lounge Tea and enters premium tea segment

T

ea market in India is estimated to be over 15 cr with a penetration of more than 90 per cent in domestic market. Bangalore-based Teesta River Tea has recently launched tea products online (Amazon) and plans to sell across selected super markets and stores in Southern India.

Teesta River Tea Company promoted by Neeraj Verma, an ex-Hindustan Unilever (HUL) hand with vast experience in the tea industry and Unilever Marketing and Raghvendra Rao, a Chartered Accountant by profession. The company wants to provide tea lovers with several choices like tea blended with super fruits, flowers and herbs that are healthy and tasty. It makes use of only natural fruits and flavours.

Besides loose teas in packets the company has introduced Lounge Tea brand in Silken Pyramid tea bags which not only allows consumers to see the fruits and flowers along with teas but enables quick infusion. Teesta Beverages has positioned teas in each key segment. Teesta High Range Tips is a blend of super fine Darjeeling and Nepal Himalayan teas with a strong Darjeeling flavor. Teesta Premium CTC tea a blend of Assam classic teas with Dooars, provide tasty and strong teas to start a refreshing day.

Neeraj Verma said, “Teesta River Tea differs from other brands because of the fine Silken Pyramid tea bags that preserve the aroma and flavor of its ingredients. We enable consumers to get fresh tea from the bush to the brand within 15 days

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see huge potential for the brand to be successful in India primarily because it identifies with our culture of bun and chai. Also we would see a lot of Indians at Papparoti cafe in Dubai and thought why not give them the taste of Papparoti in their city. Indian is the second highest consumer market globally and if one connects with a brand there seems to be no limit.

compared to other products which take around 3 months. We have no middlemen and garden fresh teas are delivered for blending and tasting from the tea estates in a week.” Teesta’s promoters are experienced leaders in the food and beverage industry and hope to see the brand make it big both online and offline in domestic and International markets. “Response is more than we had imagined. We are now eagerly looking to launch in the Southern Region and we are confident that Teesta Beverages will provide a great experience to the consumer and establish new blends which are popular globally, Neeraj added.

years. We see so many international QSRs who have been well received in India.”

Papparoti is popular for their coffee, buns and other beverages and are present in these cities Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune Chennai and Bengaluru.

“In the next quarter we plan to target cities like Chennai scheduled to open in late January 2018 and Bengaluru. We are also in talks with airports of various cities for our brand,” Jethwani said.

26

Vol. 10, Issue 08 -January- 2018

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