Swedish food processing and packaging firm Tetra Pak is hopeful of outpacing its current growth in India, which is already the fastest growing market for the company, on the back of revival in demand in the rural market and increasing awareness around health and wellness.
“We have seen continued double-digit growth across categories and have not seen a slowdown. If anything, we are probably going to see acceleration in our growth…” Kandarp Singh, managing director, Tetra Pak South Asia Markets told The Hindu .
He added that India currently was “the fastest-growing market in the Tetra Pak universe. We are seeing a massive growth in our installed base… That is actually unprecedented for us as well.”
‘Lead indicator’
In the past three years alone, the company has installed and commissioned 100 new packaging, and filling lines.
Tetra Pak has about 110 customers in India with 320 installed lines.
He added that the growth in number of lines commission by the company is a good lead indicator of a strong sense of confidence among its customers, who are major FMCG brands.
“There is rural India which is now showing [improvement]. In fact, it is outpacing growth [in urban areas] after a few tough years. That is expected to go into another trajectory based on good monsoons last year.”
While he didn’t offer exact numbers, he added that in the dairy and mango business, “I can wager that we have far better growth in rural… If urban is at 10-12%, rural will be sitting at 18% but on a smaller [base].”
On the packaging industry, Mr. Singh said the company was seeing over 20% growth in the firm’s core business — beverages. “The growth is across categories such as dairy, juices, flavoured milk and still drinks. All of them are pretty much in double digit... mainly on the back of the health and wellness trend that is now growing leaps and bounds compared to even five years ago.”
Health products
He pointed out that this was reflected in the number of new launches in this area. “There has been a massive increase in the number of product launches with health-related claims. Last year, there were around 900 such products.”
In the last four years, almost two-thirds of the company’s growth in juice nectars has come from “new ethnic flavours” such as guava and jamun . “That is not just about the taste but those which offer some functional benefit as well.”
The company is also working towards introducing dynamic QR codes on all its about 10 billion packages sold in India to enable consumer interaction as well as end-to-end traceability.
“One of the things we are working on is how to we codify each package. A QR code that gives up multiple applications such as a customer interaction program; it also opens the door for end to end traceability… There I can say India is one of the lead markets for us because what we are seeing post demonestisation…the growth in digital payments and rise in smartphones at the macro level,” he said.He said it will take another year or two to implement this.
The company also recently tied up with U.S.-based giant Microsoft for use of the latter’s HoloLens technology to help provide real-time assistance to ground-level engineers with maintenance and repair using predictive analysis.
Asked about how India is placed in Tetra Pak globally, Mr. Singh said, “We have different ways of measuring. We are now in top 10 in terms of overall topline. We are probably number 9. In terms of volume, which is the units we sell. We are now number 4. I can tell you 6 years ago we were 25… in both.”
“It has been a rapid climb. Will we get to the top, yes, we will. It is a question of when. In terms of packaging volume, we have added the biggest growth in the last three years even compares to bigger markets such as China and Brazil. I believe it’s the tip of the ice berg,” he said.
