The Hindu Business Line : Frito-Lay's new Bengal plant goes on stream

FRITO-LAY India, an associate company of the $27-billion Pepsico Group, has begun making snack foods from its newly built plant at the Sankrail Food Park in Howrah district of West Bengal.

The Rs 80-crore plant with two lines — Lays and Kurkure, in the first phase — was formally inaugurated by the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

The company, which makes Lays potato chips, Kurkure, Cheetos Fun Snacks, Uncle Chipps and Lehar Namkeen, has plans to make an additional investment of about Rs 35 crore at the Sankrail plant to add more product lines depending on the demand.

The company's Managing Director, Mr Manu Anand, has said that the manufacturing facility has been created here because of the fact that Bengal is a large grower of potato. In fact, Frito-Lay in association with local farmers, has initiated moves to grow chip-grade potato in the State. Agricultural programmes have commenced in Midnapur, Hooghly, Burdwan, Bankura and Purulia districts through 34 co-operatives and 850 farmers covering 1,000 hectares of land.

The company has plans to buy about 30,000 tonnes of potato from West Bengal by 2007.

Inaugurating the plant, Mr Bhattacharjee said that the State had attracted investments worth about Rs 400 crore in the food-processing sector in the last three years. The State Government has thus decided to acquire another 100 acres of land to accommodate new units.

Incidentally, Frito-Lay India has two factories in India, one in Punjab and the other in Pune. The company has so far invested about Rs 250 crore in the country, and has garnered 10 per cent share of the country's Rs 2,500-crore salty snacks market.

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