FieldFresh Foods: On the long road

POWER MOVES

Bharti Enterprises, which has interests in telecom, insurance, retail and farm produce, has now got in to packaged food and beverages. FieldFresh Foods, its equal joint venture with Singapore-listed Del Monte Pacific, has launched fruit drinks, packaged fruit, ketchup, sauces and pasta under the Del Monte brand.

To begin with, the entire product line will be imported. The import duty on such products is 37 per cent. Still, says Bharti Enterprises Vice-chairman and Managing Director Rakesh Bharti Mittal, the prices will be competitive. “We want to be one of the top ten food and beverage companies in India in the next five years.”

 

AT Kearney estimates the market for food and beverage retailing in India at $135 billion (Rs 648,000 crore) and has pegged an annual growth of 10-15 per cent. The established players in the market are multinational corporations like Hindustan Unilever, PepsiCo and Nestle and homegrown Dabur.

The market place is competitive and FieldFresh Foods cannot depend on imports for long. The company thus plans to invest Rs 100 crore in a green-field manufacturing facility at Hosur in Tamil Nadu, which will be operational by 2010. “We will start (manufacturing) two products — juice drinks and culinary items like ketchup and mayonnaise — in the first phase,” says Mittal.

The challenge for FieldFresh Foods will be to get the distribution network in place. “While retailing may not be such a big challenge for Bharti, FMCG is a different ball game altogether. Distribution here will be the key,” says a sector analyst.