Beverages multinational Coca-Cola India announced plans to raise sales for mango drink, Maaza to $1 billion (approximately 6,845 crore at today’s rupee value) in eight years. The juice drink’s current retail sales are Rs 2,500 crore. Maaza was launched by Parle Products 40 years ago, and the Chauhan family sold the brand, along with Thums Up and Gold Spot, to Coca-Cola in 1993.
Venkatesh Kini, president, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia said, “We will be investing heavily in the coming years to achieve our target for Maaza. This investment will be from our Rs 30,000-crore overall investment plan in India, which we had announced in 2012 and will continue till 2020. We as a company and our bottlers will expand distribution and augment manufacturing capacity to double the sales of Maaza by 2023.”
Mr Kini, who spoke to The Hindu at the company’s stall at the Make in India Week venue here , said that the company’s bottlers are setting up five greenfield projects over the next two years (in addition to the existing 57 bottling plants), and at least 50 per cent of these will have manufacturing lines for Maaza. “These new lines will help keep pace with the expected increase in demand of Maaza over the next few years.”
The company and its bottlers in India annually procure 70,000 tonnes of mango pulp worth Rs 500 crore. In 2023, if Maaza becomes the first $1 billion juice drink brand from India, the company will end up procuring over 1.4 lakh tonnes of mango pulp annually, worth nearly Rs 1,100 crore, Mr Kini said.
To source high-quality mango pulp from farmers in South and Central India, Coca-Cola India has partnered with Jain Irrigation to enhance yield. Four years ago, Jain Irrigation had launched Project Unnati, which is aimed at large-scale adoption of ultra high density plantation in the country. The project will be scaled up over the next 10 years.
