The major soft drink manufacturing company, PepsiCo has recently stated that it is thinking of starting exporting the fruit concentrate from India within the next few years. The company is currently betting on the kinnow and the other citrus fruits and it has already started producing fruit concentrate for itself from Punjab. The company officials have informed that they are also planning to look at the tomatoes, mangoes and melons among other fruits in the future, apart from Citrus.
The Executive Vice-President -Exports of PepsiCo, Mr. Amit K. Bose stated that the company has already received some queries from certain countries and is seeing demand from the South-East Asian countries like Thailand as well. He said that PepsiCo is reducing its dependence on import of citrus concentrate from Pakistan and Brazil, by almost 30 per cent. This concentrate is being used for its Tropicana brand at the moment. Mr. Bose said that the 450 tonnes of kinnow concentrate, being produced at the Punjab State Government facility is having a significant 30 per cent more price than its imports.
To quote the Executive Director, Export, Agriculture and External Affairs of PepsiCo, Mr. Abhiram Seth, "The immediate challenge is to get the supply chain and the procurement strategy in place. Ultimately we would like to be competitive in our agriculture initiatives here, and it is only a matter of time before the supply chain issues unravel themselves". He said that the Punjab Government has established the 10-acre facility in a 35 acres food processing park in Hoshiarpur and the multi fruit processing single line is having a capacity of 400 tonnes per day. Mr. Bose said that the capacity can also be easily doubled with a second line and recovering the citrus peel oil that is already being extracted from the kinnows is another lucrative opportunity. He added that the oil can fetch between $200-300 per kg, being used as flavouring.
Talking about the companys plans further, Mr. Seth said that PepsiCo is planning to do a trial of 100 tonnes of carrot, in the month of April and a trial of 8,000 tonnes of tomatoes and of mangoes grown in the region, in June and July. In his words, "To make Pepsis juice and juice-based drink business competitive, the ultimate aim would be to meet our requirements from here and Punjab is one of the areas with great potential". He further said that the company is exploring opportunities with the other fruits like melons and water melons as well.
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| Posted : 2/26/2008 |
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