M. E. Meeran, Chairman, Eastern group of companies, says, “We bring the raw materials right from the farm to the market through our factories located in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The quality of the product is ensured as per international standards for which we have a modern laboratory equipped with advanced testing machines and qualified experts.”

Eastern Condiments was started in 1982 in the spices district of Idukki. It runs two factories in the Western Ghats.

Meeran says the group has several businesses, with combined market value of Rs 1,000 crore. (The Eastern brand has a presence in South India with its mattresses ‘Sunidra’, tread rubber, readymade shirts and resort.) In the spices market, it claims to cater to over two million households in India and abroad.

“Our consumers are spread out across the globe - we export our spices to West Asian countries, Europe and the US.”The strength and success of the company, he says, lies in its simple attitude of applying old time values to a new world technology. “Strict quality parameters are employed in every sphere of production.

There are 115 spices and masala manufacturing units in Kerala, many of them in the khadi and village industries sector. The major brands may be less than 10 including Saras, Brahmins and Nirapara. According to a supermarket operator in Tripunithura, near Kochi, the consumers’ preference is for branded products. The pricing is almost the same in the case of branded products and that does not seem to be a constraint. The quality of the product and its (traditional) taste assume importance, says an executive who works at one of the supermarkets. Some of the consumers just ask for spice and powders without naming any brand, says the manager of another supermarket.

M. E. Meeran is assisted by the others on the Board of Directors, Navas Meeran, M. E. Mohamed, Firoz Meeran, M. S. Ranganathan and M. S. Sebastian. Currently, the group employs 2,900 people; 1,800 work in the condiments divisions in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Eastern Condiments processes and manufactures spices and blended spice powders. . The products include spice powders such as turmeric, chilli, coriander, pepper, ginger and Kashmiri chilli; blended spice powders such as garam masala, sambar, rasam, kulambu masala, pickle powder, masalas for Pav Bhaji and channa, tandoori, chicken, fish, meat, biriyani, kebabs, egg curry and chaat. Many more are in the offing.

Other associated products are Eastern Pickles, exclusively for exports. It has also included beverages such as Adimali Kaapi (Coffee), Eastea (Tea) and Eastern Packaged Drinking Water in its basket. It offers rice-based powder mixes for puttu, idli, dosa, pathiri and appam.

The recipes are developed by the company,” Meeran says. After identifying the tastes of consumers in different regions of the country, it has developed masalas to suit their palates. For example, Madras Sambar Masala has become popular in Tamil Nadu. Similarly, Chettinadu Chicken Curry Masala and Kolambu Masala, are liked by consumers in Chennai and other areas in Tamil Nadu.

The Sambar masala tops the list of sales in the country with 125 tonnes a month followed by all chicken and meat masalas with 100 and 95 tonnes respectively, Navas Meeran points out. “Our market share in Kerala is over 60 per cent; we have significant presence in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and in fact, we are No.1 in south India,” he says. Of the group’s estimated turnover of Rs 300 crore in 2008-09, over Rs 200 crore would come from South India, he adds. “We have already made our presence felt in the North Indian spices masala markets with Shahi Paneer Masala, Rajma masala, Pav bhaji masala, kabab and garam masala and vegetable masala apart from chicken and mutton masalas,” he further explains. The company’s strategy is to make available Eastern products nationally.

Apart from masalas, the company produces powders of individual spices, such as chilly, coriander, and turmeric, apart from consumer packs of whole seeds (cumin, fenugreek, aniseed, mustard) and spices such as cloves, cardamom and dry ginger.

To facilitate faster and easier cooking for nuclear families where both husbands and wives are working “We are in the process of launching four types of gravies for making sambar, fish, chicken and meat early next year,” Navas Meeran says. “We will also be adding different types of soups to our list of products soon.”

Compared to the brands coming from North India, spice powders manufactured in Kerala are cheaper, probably because of their availability in the State. According to a major Kerala-based manufacturer, despite the competition the industry is doing well because of ever-growing demand. If the masalas can provide the consumer with the real taste of the curries/sambar or rasam definitely they will stick to your product, he claimed. Masalas from North India are not popular among consumers here, he said.

The company has an all-India distribution network of outlets. “Through these outlets, we will make available everything that is needed in a kitchen, and that is our strategy currently under way,” says Navas Meeran. “Already we have put in place the network in most of the North Indian states except West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa which will be covered soon.”

There are 42,000 shops in the country selling Eastern products. Eastern has also introduced East tea, coffee, payasam mix and rice and black gram powders for making traditional South Indian breakfasts/snacks.

Eastern Condiments has a chilly grinding mill from Germany with a capacity to grind 1.5 tonne an hour at its unit in Theni, Tamil Nadu. This mill, unlike the conventional grinders, grinds raw materials at low temperature and that keeps the original flavour of the chilli intact, the company claims. This ensures that consistency, natural colour and product fineness is maintained. It also has a coriander grinding mill, also from Germany with a capacity of one tonne an hour. This machine ensures trouble-free, ultra-fine grinding at low temperatures.

Eastern has its own warehouses in Theni in Tamil Nadu and in Kerala to store materials. It also has its own warehouse of 40,000 sq.ft. for raw materials. Besides, a refrigerated storage facility of 90,000 sq.ft. to store 3,000 tonnes of chilli is fully functional in Theni.

Apart from this, there is a storage facility of 10,000 sq.ft. at Adimali (Kerala) for raw materials and 10,000 sq.ft. for finished goods. Additional storage facility of 13,000 sq. ft. is available at Kalady (Kerala). All warehouses are equipped with insect and rodent control devices including pheromone traps, the company claims.

“The objective of the company,” Meeran adds, “is to increase its volume of business and to achieve that we always go with a lower margin.”

The company has set up a fully-automated microbiology-testing lab to ensure stringent quality in spices and ready-to-eat food products and it claims to be the first company in the country to have such a system. Eastern Condiments also claims to be the first company in India in the spices sector to have the fully-automated system Tempo Reader, which detects yeasts and moulds within 48 hours. Other equipment include gas chromatographs to analyse pesticide residue count, UV spectrophotometers to determine colour value of chillies, curcumin in turmeric and piperin in pepper, NIR spectrophotometer for nutrition factor analysis and the ELISA Plate Reader for aflatoxin and ochratoxin analysis. Besides, it has the Luminator Pocket Swab which can estimate microbial count within minutes.

Eastern Condiments is in the process of transforming itself into a highly mechanised, quality-conscious and IT-enabled organisation. To achieve this objective, the company has initiated the required processing for obtaining quality certifications from various bodies, says Meeran. Eastern Condiments, which had posted a total turnover of around Rs 200 crore last year with Rs 40 crore from exports, is targeting a turnover of Rs 300 crore in the current fiscal.

“The current economic slowdown has not affected us so far, but we anticipate some negative impact in the coming days and hence we have kept on hold some of our expansion projects for the time being,” says Navas Meeran.

For a global footprint, the company has started commercial production of pulses and whole spices from its packaging unit in Ras Al Khaima in the United Arab Emirates, 60 km from Dubai. The first phase of the unit, involving an investment of Rs 5 crore, with a capacity of 1,000 tonnes a month on a two-acre plot of land, has been completed. Raw materials will be sourced from 42 countries and, after processing, it will be packaged in the unit and marketed in the US, Europe, Gulf and other foreign countries. “Marketing would be done through our existing distribution network,” says Navas Meeran.

For this group, the sun rises brightly in the East.

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