Dabur to set up mfg units in HP, Uttaranchal, Egypt

Personal-care and food products-maker, Dabur India, plans to open three manufacturing facilities in India and overseas, which will be operational by June-July next year.

The company is setting up an unit each in Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal, besides one in Egypt.

"We plan to open three new facilities which will start manufacturing by July next," Dabur India's Vice-Chairman, Amit Burman, said here.

The units will basically manufacture haircare, besides Hajmola and other digestive products, he said.

Even as Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal will have the company's first such units, it would be the second in Egypt, Burman said.

The investment would be around Rs 50-70 crore for all the three units and funding would be entirely from internal accruals, he said.

Dabur had, this fiscal, acquired Fem Care and launched several new products like Real Burrst, a fruit drink, Uveda, a skin-care product, besides light hair oil and shampoos, thus indicating the rigorous expansion the company was undertaking.

Dabur's international business contributes about 15 per cent of overall revenues, Burman said.

Dabur had clocked a net profit of Rs 391.21 crore last fiscal with a gross sales of Rs 2,834.11 crore.

Asked about new products to be launched by this year-end, Burman said the company was constantly exploring opportunities and plans to launch a few new products and variants in the coming months. However, he did not elaborate.

Burman said the company would be opening 20 stand-alone stores called 'Newu', by the end of this fiscal at an investment of Rs 50 crore. Currently, 12 stores are operational across Delhi-NCR, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

"We had towards the latter part of 2008-09 tweaked our 'Newu' plan in view of the changed market conditions and this has already started paying rich dividend, he said.

In Q4 of last fiscal and Q1 of this fiscal for instance, "we have almost halved our quarterly loss from the retail business and are looking at quicker store turn-arounds," Burman said.

"We expect to significantly reduce our losses and attain break-even by next year," he added.