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New Delhi-based Mother Dairy Fruit and Vegetable Pvt Ltd is planning to tap South Indian markets with its variety of curds and yogurts. Plans are afoot to enter cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai by May 2015.
The company’s offerings — Misti Doi and Dahi — are available in the West, North and East at present.
Mother Dairy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
According to Subhasis Basu, Business Head, Dairy Products Division, the company will leverage its existing milk processing facility at Tirupathi to include a line of “freshly fermented products”. These include curd-based offerings like yogurt, dahi , butter-milk and lassi .
The new facility at Tirupathi is expected to come up at an investment of Rs 25-30 crore, by May next year. Basu declined to give further details.
“Fermented products have a low shelf- life because of which you need to have manufacturing facilities in the local market that you would want to cater to. Hence, we thought of leveraging our existing capacity in Tirupati to tap the South Indian markets,” he told Business Line.
Fresh dairy products are expected to account for nearly Rs 800 crore out of Mother Dairy’s Rs 6,000-crore turnover in FY13.
Apart from milk and dairy products being marketed under the ‘Mother Diary’ brand, the company operates in two other verticals —fruits, vegetables and processed foods under the ‘Safal’ brand and edible oil under the ‘Dhara’ brand.
Test marketing
According to Basu, the company is test marketing its curd-based offerings in select regions in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Products are being flown in daily from its existing manufacturing facilities in Delhi and Mumbai to cater to these regions.
“Once our facility at Tirupathi comes up, we would look at commercial launch of the products across the South,” he said.
Mother Dairy currently has five milk processing units — one each in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Mumbai, Tirupati and Gujarat. Of these, two have been leveraged for fermented products, and one each for ice-cream and dairy offerings.
Nearly 60 per cent of its annual product requirements are produced from its own resources, while the remaining 40 per cent is outsourced from 15 vendors.
New Products
According to Basu, the company is eyeing new launches in product segments that have a longer shelf-life. These include milk powders, dairy whiteners, tetra packs and dairy beverages. Plans are also afoot to set up another facility at Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, which will go on stream by September 2015.
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