Vst Natural Ties Up With Dean Foods Of Us
VST Natural Products Ltd has tied up with US vegetable pickling major Dean Foods Company for retailing some of its pickled vegetables as also sliced cucumber.
Currently, the company is selling pickled cucumber (gherkin) in bulk 220 litre drums which is reprocessed and converted into retail packs for departmental store chains in the US.
VST Natural has also started retail packs of sliced cucumber, ready for use in sandwiches, in consumer bottles with brand names suggested by Dean Foods like Aunt Jane and Kosher.
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A similar arrangement has been entered into between VST Natural and Campbell Soup Ltd, another American major.
According to VST Natural's Venkatapur plant manager S Rabindranath, 80 per cent of the company's cucumber slices and pickles will be lifted by the two American food giants.
In the eight months since the plant went into production, VST Natural has exported 1,300 tonnes of gherkin pickles in bulk form.
Currently, it is concentrating on pickled and sliced vegetables, but will soon start dehydrated products and spices as well for the European and US markets.
Rabindranath said the dehydration line in the factory will start by March-end and from April onwards, dehydrated onions, dehydrated spices, spice products, spice oleoresins, natural food colours, culinary herbs and essential oils will be available for the export markets.
The company is also talking to McDonald's International for utilising its products not only for their fast food outlets within India but also in other countries.
The company has already spent around Rs 42 crore, including Rs 32 crore on a modern fully automated state-of-the-art processing plant supplied by Germany and Holland.
The plant has a capacity to process annually 10,000 tonnes of raw material inputs.
According to VST Natural managing director Epur Anil Kumar, the company is scheduled to achieve an export target of Rs 100 crore per year by the end of the decade.
Epur said already some 3,000 farmers in the region in close proximity to the plant have been motivated to take up production of sweet chillies paprika, baby corn, Mexican peppers, cucumber and culinary herbs