Britannia research centre to innovate new food products

Leading biscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd on Tuesday unveiled a research and development (R&D) centre and a production facility near here to innovate new food products for Indian and global consumers.

Set up at Bidadi, about 40 km from here, the Rs 200 crore R&D centre has analytical, sensory, microbiology labs and pilot plants for its products, including biscuits, cakes, rusks, breads and dairy items.

"We aim to be a 'total foods' company over the next five years, serving a billion consumers four times a day," said Britannia Managing Director Varun Berry on the occasion.

Karnataka Industries Minister R.V. Deshpande inaugurated the twin facilities.

The manufacturing facility, equipped with high-speed processing machinery, will channel the innovations from the research centre to markets across the country.

"The research centre reinforces our commitment to deliver innovative products in newer categories and will help in our growth into other bakery segments within macro-snacking," said Berry.

The company will hire an additional 550 people to ramp up its workforce to 1,350 from 800 currently employed, with half of them being women.

The facility has also a team of food technologists, scientists, chefs and nutritionists.

"The new facility, built on the tradition of innovating in food technology over the past four decades, will steer us to the next phase of growth by delivering innovations, renovating core products and providing value engineering to be cost competitive in the market place," noted R&D Vice President Sudhir Nema.

The Rs.8,500 crore company shifted its R&D centre to Bengaluru from Mumbai to consolidate its operations spanning analytical excellence lab, product & packaging development, scientific regulatory issues, nutrition and dairy development.

With trusted brands like Good Day, Tiger, NutriChoice, Milk Bikis and Marie Gold, the company sells its range of products through four million retail outlets across the country.

Accounting for 10 percent of its revenue, the company's dairy products are sold through 700,000 direct outlets and three million retail outlets indirectly.

As the largest brand in the organised segment, the company's 'Britannia Bread' contributed Rs 385 crore in value, with 1.1 lakh tonne in volume per annum.

With 13 factories and five franchisees, the company sells nearly one million loaves daily in 73 cities and towns across the country.

--IANS

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