India’s first packaged fruit juice brand, Onjus, is getting a fresh lease of life with a new manufacturing base in Sri Lanka. Tunip Agro, the company behind Onjus has set up a new subsidiary - Tunip Lanka Private Ltd, with an investment of Rs 75 crore.

Using Sri Lanka as an export hub, Onjus would now wend its way to the SAARC countries and even West Asia and Europe.

Mr Siddhant Goyal, Director, Tunip Agro, said, “With the new manufacturing hub in Sri Lanka we would be deriving several benefits. Due to the free trade concession agreement in Sri Lanka, there would be no import duties on the fruit concentrate. Besides, freight and surface transport costs would be cheaper if we export from the island nation.”

In the past, Tunip Agro had floated a joint venture (JV) with Lanka Milk Foods in Sri Lanka to make the brand. However, now with its new subsidiary and manufacturing base in Sri Lanka, it would have the capacity to produce 39 million litres every year.

Currently, Onjus is manufactured by Godrej Hershey at its manufacturing base in Mandideep in Madhya Pradesh, which makes 1.2 million litres every year. With the additional facilities, Onjus would also get extended into new categories such as ketchup and mayonnaise and even dairy products in the ready-to-drink category. “We are expanding our portfolio into dairy products. There would also be sugar-free and fat-free beverages going forward,” added Mr Goyal.

Today, Onjus claims to be the number three brand after Real (Dabur) and Tropicana (Pepsi) in the fruit juice segment. It is backed by 150 distributors and available at 2 lakh outlets across the country.

“Onjus initiated the fruit juice category in India much before the MNCs came in. While it has enough brand equity and distribution strengths, what it lacks today is advertising and marketing muscle in comparison to the MNC brands,” observes Mr Jagdeep Kapoor, Managing Director, Samsika Marketing Consultants.

Onjus was launched in 1997 and faced a severe financial crunch between 2001 and 2005 when it was forced to go out of the market. In the past, the brand belonged to group company Enkay Texofood, which also had a textile division. Cash flows from the foods business into the textile business led to Onjus getting ‘squeezed’ out of the market and resurfacing under Tunip Agro in 2004.

Since 2005, there have been several investors willing to help the company in making a comeback. There have been investments made by stock trading firm Prime Securities and Mandala Capital, an associate company of the Mahyco Group, to keep the brand afloat. In 2010, Tunip Agro got SICOM (Maharashtra Government owned financial institution) to pick up a 16 per cent stake in the company for Rs 13.5 crore. Tunip Agro expects to take its sales turnover from the current Rs 73 crore to reach Rs 1,000 crore by 2016.

Purvita@thehindu.co.in

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