While coconut farmers in several States are trying hard to earn a worthwhile income from their farms and the State machinery is making efforts to equip them with modern tools of production and marketing, the threat from overseas giants is looming large in the sector. Over the years, the sector has seen migration of many coconut farmers to rubber and other plantation crops owing mostly to the hardships faced by them and the fluctuating prices for coconut and coconut oil. Even in the midst of an uneasy situation in the farming sector in general and the coconut farms in particular, tender coconut water has remained a natural drink much in demand.
Significantly, Convenience Store News, a western publication dealing with the markets, quoted in Wall Street Journal , in one of its recent issues, that the annual retail sales of tender coconut water has reached $400 million. The report hints at the possibility of giants such as Coca Cola and Pepsico entering the packaged tender coconut water market. The report observes that the existing players in the market such as Vita Coco and Zico have been able to increase the revenue multifold since 2005.
ONE, a US-based firm marketing packaged tender coconut water, in its online campaign, quoted an FAO report on the benefits of the drink. Accordingly, a few years ago, when the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was granted a patent for bottling coconut water, an FAO official noted that the drink contains the same five electrolytes found in human blood. He called coconut water ‘the fluid of life’, the campaign said. In medical emergencies, coconut water is used intravenously when conventional hydration fluids are not available, it added.
To be analysed
With the multinationals stepping into the bottled mineral water segment, the prospects of the giants entering the tender coconut water is being watched by experts in the field. The development is to be analysed in the context of the prevailing scenario in the sector.
When the coconuts were fetching Rs.4 to Rs.8 per nut, the tender ones were selling twice and above that price in the market. One of the difficulties in marketing tender coconut water originated from the very source, that of plucking the tender ones from the palm. Many of the conventional pluckers, mostly belonging to a particular community, had taken up other occupations as the social milieu underwent a gradual transformation in Kerala. A considerable number of the tender nuts available in Kerala market is brought from Tamil Nadu.
The crisis gave an opportunity for entrepreneurs to switch over to packaged tender coconut water. The Coconut Development Board, in collaboration with Defence Food Research Laboratory, Mysore, has developed the technology for packing tender coconut water in pouches or aluminium cans with shelf life of more than six months under normal ambience condition and 12 months under refrigerated condition. There are about half a dozen units in India which have employed the technology and have been doing commercial production.
As the market is evolving, the awareness on the health benefits of the natural drink is also on the rise. The pro-organic eating habits nurtured in the West have contributed to the increased demand of the tender coconut water across the world. Today, the demand is witnessing a huge rise, with some of the companies engaged in export, being unable to meet the demand, the Coconut Development Board Chairman, T.K.Jose said, indicating the kind of market volume in the tender water segment.
