Thanks to “significant inflation in prices of most ingredients and furnace oil” biscuit majors including Britannia, Parle and ITC Sunfeast have increased the prices of biscuits by 8 to 12 per cent, say industry sources.

According to a Britannia Industries spokesperson, which commands a third of the Rs 15,000-crore biscuit market in India, there has been a very severe impact. More specifically, the prices of ingredients including milk and milk derivatives, a lot of which goes into these products, have gone up quite dramatically in the last one year “forcing us to take a price increase at varying levels – up to 12 per cent across categories.”

Mr Mayank Shah, Group Product Manager, Parle Products, says though the prices of sugar, wheat, fats and edible oils are a tad lower than what they were last year, the prices of cocoa, dairy products and nuts such as cashew, badam and pista have gone up by over 15 per cent. “So, though we managed to absorb the cost pressure on mass market products such as glucose biscuits, we had to increase the prices of premium-quality products such as Hide & Seek and Bourbon by 10-12 per cent,” he said. Parle is the market leader in volume terms and way ahead of its competitors in the glucose biscuit category.

According to industry sources, the brands such as Oreo and ITC Sunfeast too have increased prices across categories. They say the most affected products were cocoa-based biscuits and biscuits with nuts such as Hide & Seek (Parle), Dark Fantasies (Sunfeast), Good Day and other premium cookies and most Oreo products.

Besides, the Government recently announced an increased MSP (minimum support price) for wheat and oilseeds (winter crops). Though the actual impact of this will be felt only when the cropping season arrives, “this will certainly mount more pressure on cost – and there may well be another round of price increase by then”, said the Britannia spokesperson.

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