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Amul eyes top slot in India's ice cream market

Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, India's largest milk products maker, said on Wednesday it aimed to become the country's top ice cream manufacturer by April 2002.

The fast-growing domestic ice cream market now is dominated by a slew of players including Hindustan Lever Ltd, Mother Dairy and Vadilal Industries Ltd, besides GCMMF.

"Amul will be the single largest ice cream brand selling over 24 million litres by April 2002," GCMMF's managing director B M Vyas told Reutersin an interview.

GCMMF sells its ice cream under the Amul brand and commands some 35 per cent of the market despite not being present in key areas like Delhi where its sister concern, Mother Dairy, sells its products.

HLL, the current market leader, sells around 24 million litres of ice cream under its umbrella brand Kwality Walls.

Vyas said the co-operative, which entered the lucrative ice cream sector only four year ago, was expanding the capacities of its ice cream manufacturing plants at 25 locations around the country.

GCMMF, the top body of the Gujarat milk producers co-operative, started operations before India gained independence from British rule over half a century ago.

The federation has village level societies, which collect milk from producers. It clocked turnover of Rs 22.58 billion for the year ended March 2001 from sales of various dairy products such as butter, cheese, ice cream and chocolates.

THRUST ON MILK POWDER

In an attempt to overcome sluggish topline growth, GCMMF has readied three infant cereal milk powders to capture a slice of the lucrative baby foods market, Vyas said.

"The baby food market is currently dominated by one player, we intend to be a major player there," he said.

The federation now sells its infant milk powder "Amulspary." The new products to be launched, according to the Codex standards, would be directly in competition with the cereal infant milk products of Nestle India Ltd.

Swiss food giant Nestle SA's subsidiary is a dominant player in India's infant food products with its brands Cerelac and Lactogen.

"Our cereal milk products will hit the market in about two months and we are targeting annual sales of 8,000-10,000 tonnes," Vyas said.

He said the co-operative giant was also weighing opportunities to enter the branded coffee segment. "We've had talks with the state-run Coffee Board and others but nothing concrete has been evolved," he said.

Vyas said the federation was looking a number of new products to leverage on its strength of a nationwide network of distributors and retailers. An estimated 3,000 distributors and 500,000 retailers deal in various Amul products.

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