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Virendra Pandit

Ahmedabad , July 5

Vadilal Industries Ltd will invest Rs 40 crore this year to expand existing manufacturing capacities at its two ice-cream and processed food plants in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and the proposed third unit in West Bengal before the year end.

The company earlier planned to set up a new manufacturing facility in Uttaranchal, as it was a no-excise region. But after the Union Budget scrapped excise duty on ice-cream, the company recently decided to set up the plant at Kolkata. "Under the changed circumstances, it would not be prudent to have a new manufacturing facility so close to Bareili in Uttar Pradesh," Vadilal's Managing Director Mr Rajesh Gandhi said.

Expansion

He told Business Line that the company has instead decided to expand the Bareili plant's capacity from 60,000 litres to 90,000 litres a day.

The Rs 200-crore Vadilal Group's second plant at Pundra, near Gandhinagar in Gujarat, has a capacity of 85,000 litres per day.

The Kolkata plant, with a capacity of 35,000 litres a day, is being set up at a cost of about Rs 9.75 crore, he said.

Processed food biz

The company is also expanding capacity at its processed and frozen food plant at Dharampur in Valsad district of South Gujarat to one lakh kg per day. This plant, started as a horticulture processing industry in 1991, manufactures ready meals and fruit pulp, besides preserved vegetables and fruits, the majority of which is exported to fetch about Rs 25 crore per annum, Mr Gandhi said.

The total investments in the Bareili, Dharampur and Kolkata plants would amount to Rs 40 crore, he said. The company has been awarded the ISO 9002 certification for quality systems.

Although Amul recently emerged as the largest ice-cream brand in India, Vadilal claims to be the largest brand in Gujarat, with about 80 flavours and 70 per cent market-share; its national share is 25 per cent in an industry worth about Rs 800 crore.

If Amul turned Anand into the `milk capital of India', Ahmedabad has emerged as the ice-cream capital over the last two decades with several players entering the fray. Ice-cream is consumed across all age-groups in the city round the year.

The 70-year-old Vadilal Group has three companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) — Vadilal Industries Ltd, which manufactures ice-cream and frozen food, Vadilal Enterprises which markets food products and Vadilal Chemicals Ltd dealing with specialised industrial gases and other chemicals. The group is also involved with real estate and construction business, forex advisory services and full-fledged money changer (FFMC) services, offering non-banking financial services.

More Stories on : New Projects | Dairy & Dairy Products

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