Diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd has forayed into fruits, vegetables and other perishables segment, the company Chairman, YC Deveshwar, said at the 106th Annual General Meeting.

According to him, the company has recently forayed into the frozen prawn segment. While the offerings have been launched in "select markets" at present, plans are afoot to roll-out the same nationally.

Investments have also gone into farming of aromatic and medicinal plants, "keeping in mind ITC's focus on agri-based health and wellness products".

ITC has also launched its 'ITC Master Chef' brand of spices, while Subean brand of coffee and Fabelle brand of chocolates have been introduced previously.

The company is also investing in 20 latest consumer goods manufacturing and logistics facilities which are under development and is expected to create "food processing and manufacturing centres of excellence" to support the scaling up of its agri-business division, Deveshwar said.

New f acility

Meanwhile, Sanjiv Puri, CEO, pointed out that the company has brought on-stream a new intergrated food and personal care manufacturing and packaging facility at Guwahati in Assam.

Vivel soaps, he pointed out, was one of the "popular" offerings ahead of major players like HUL.

Puri also pointed out that wholesale channel disruption has been caused primarily because of demonetisation of high value currency notes. As such there could have been temporary non-availability of some FMCG offerings in neighborhood stores.

"There has been a number of distruptions in the wholesale trade channels like demonetisation. Because of that availability of stocks at neighborhood stores - that depend on wholesale channels - could take a hit," the CEO said replying to shareholder queries.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW