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Amul will jostle for space on Walmart shelves
Tuesday, 16 December 2003, 20:30 IST
CHENNAI: India's biggest milk producing cooperative Amul is negotiating with global supermarket chain Walmart to sell its range of dairy products.
The model Indian company is also attempting to tap the vast export potential in neighbourhood markets like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Officials of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) presented the success story of their brand Amul at the 5th Foodpro 2003 conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that concluded Tuesday.
They said India is expected to produce 135 million tonnes of milk by 2010.
"Milk is one produce in India where production has gone up many fold in the last two decades. But the price has never fallen or caused a loss to the cattle farmer," Amul officials said.
Amul's success story is well documented.
Beginning in 1946 as a cooperative in just two villages of Gujarat, collecting only 247 litres of milk, the company is today India's top brand for dairy products -- ranging from milk and butter to cheese and ice cream.
Amul already sells its products in neighbouring Nepal.
Countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh import over 50,000 tonnes of milk each annually. Pakistan alone imports 65,000 tonnes.
Now India and GCMMF are looking at capturing this million-dollar neighbourhood markets.
Sri Lanka is flooded with an Indonesian brand, which is said to be of an inferior quality and also costs less.
With Tetramilk, Amul is now establishing a distribution chain in Sri Lanka and hopes that its products will find a place in the island nation in 2004.
Pakistan has bigger milk import expenditure than Sri Lanka.
With improving trade relations between the countries, GCMMF is hoping that its talks with Pakistani officials will soon bear fruit.
In countries like the US, Britain, Singapore and Malaysia, Amul's Indian desserts like srikhand and gulab jamuns are very popular.
Then there are markets like Australia where Amul butter already finds a place and the company is looking to sell its other products.
In India, GCMMF has 500,000 retail outlets through which it plans to bring agri-products into the market.
With the Amul ice cream brand firmly established, GCMMF's cold chains too are now in place. These will be used for other products like pizzas soon, officials said.
Source: IANS
Source: IANS