‘Tata Global must scale up to tide over stress in black tea’

To focus on market share, new products, says chairman

N. Chandrasekaran

Tata Global Beverages (TGB) chairman N. Chandrasekaran has emphasised the need to scale up operations in certain areas at a time when the black tea segment is under stress.

“The focus of the company will be to try and scale [up] specific platforms and operations and also capture the growth in the Indian market,” he told shareholders at the AGM.

Focus on Indian market

He said that there would be a thrust on growing the Indian market through a combination of focussing on market share and new products. Noting that some of the international markets had de-grown, he said that actions had been taken to exit from certain operations like those in China.

TGB brands are present in 40 countries with the company evolving to become a beverage entity with interests in tea, coffee and water, from a plantation company. It closed 2017-18 with a revenue growth of 2% (after excluding the impact of sale and recast of businesses) and an 18% rise in profit.

Amid speculation of a restructuring proposal to merge the group’s food and beverages businesses into a single company, he said there was “no concrete proposal” but the TGB board would deliberate if such a plan was placed before it.

Responding to shareholders’ queries on the ‘reports’ of rearranging the foods and beverage businesses of the group, he said proposals and ideas get discussed... these proposals sometimes come from investment bankers, sometimes internally. Whenever there is concrete proposal in front of the board, it will deliberate on it.

According to him, the beverages major “has been trying out and launching products” in various spaces in line with macro trends of premiumisation, off-take in wellness-space and others.