The Hindu Business Line : French trolley co to set up local unit

Mumbai, Sept. 4 The $150-million Strasbourg-based Caddie SA will float a 50:50 joint venture with Retail Detailz (India) Pvt Ltd to manufacture shopping trolleys and carts for the Indian retail industry.

A new manufacturing plant is being set in Shahapur on the Mumbai-Nasik highway for the same.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Frederic Colomina, International Sales Director, said, “We plan to have our own subsidiary in which we will have an Indian joint venture partner. Currently, we are working out the exact details of the partnership. India is a growing market and going forward, we would like to localise and provide the country with customised products. We feel India is growing faster than the Chinese market.”

A-10 acre factory will be set up in Shahapur, Nasik to manufacture trolleys and carts which can be used in malls, said Mr Ali Hassan, Business Head, North India.

Caddie SA has two facilities in France and one each in China and Portugal, with licensees in Australia and Malaysia. The company has the capacity to manufacture six million trolleys worldwide and it will manufacture two lakh trolleys for India. The steel and metal components and the other raw material required for manufacturing trolleys would be sourced from India, according to Mr Colomina.

Mr Colomina put the global market size of shopping carts and trolleys at €110 million or $150 million. At six million trolleys, Caddie is the second largest manufacturer, next to Germany’s Wenzel.

Currently, Wenzel is present in India through a distributor and is a challenger brand for Caddie worldwide. Caddie India would be the first international player in this category to float a company in India.

It would manufacture 1.6 million trolleys for India. At present, Caddie’s trolley brand is imported into the country and has a market share of 45 per cent.

“There is no growth in Europe in this specific category, while China and India are the fastest growing markets,” said Mr Colomina. The company employs 1,000 people worldwide.

Retail Detailz, a five-year-old Indian company, used to import trolleys from different parts of the world but with this tie-up, will manufacture trolleys of 25-300 litre capacity.

Apart from manufacturing shop fixtures like shelves in hypermarkets and supermarkets, the company also imports check-in counters. The company caters to clients such as Hypercity, Reliance, Pantaloons, Trumart, Spinach and D-Mart.

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