Eveready To Up Packet Tea Focus

Tea and batteries major Eveready Industries India plans to focus increasingly on packet tea, over a period of time.

Deepak Khaitan, vice-chairman and managing director of Eveready, said the company's brands like Tez, Jaago and Premium Gold will be relaunched. The brands will also bear the Greendale logo, which communicates value of "a companion bringing freshness and strength".

Greendale represents a set of values like companionship, tangible differentiation and consumer proximity. This will encompass the company's corporate philosophy and will be carried by products of Eveready's battery, flashlight and new products divisions.

The company plans to bring down its focus from bulk tea to packet tea over the next 2-3 years, Aditya Khaitan, director of Eveready, added. The company presently has around 34 million kg tea in bulk and 6 million kg in packet form. "Over a period of time we would like to have 20 million kg in packet tea," he said. The company plans to bring down its bulk tea exposure from 34 million kg to 27 million kg.

"We have already exited from Darjeeling, with Dooars we will have four million kg and another three million from Assam," said Aditya Khaitan. The inflow of cash from sale of tea gardens would be reinvested in building the packet tea business.

The company is also exploring other opportunities in the FMCG segment, essentially in the foods category. Deepak Khaitan said Eveready has already done a soft launch for Tez in Kolkata and would complete West Bengal by the end of the month.

Eveready has also introduced the rechargeable torch with a built-in charger. "With the launch of alkaline batteries, Eveready now has the entire range of dry cell batteries" said Deepak Khaitan.

Eveready will focus on the rural market for its tea and batteries as its strength lies there, feels the company. The company enjoys around 41 per cent of the battery marketshare.