Even as confectionery major Perfetti Van Melle India is foraying into the branded snacks business, leading FMCG firm CavinKare is planning to enter the Indian confectionery market as part of its growth strategy. After acquiring the Mumbai-based Garden Namkeens, a traditional snacks company, CavinKare is now gearing up for a national roll-out of Garden Snacks with effective marketing plans.
To start with, CavinKare is setting up a new manufacturing facility for Garden Snacks in Thane with an investment of Rs 75 crore. Currently, Garden Namkeen manufactures and markets snacks under the brand name ?Garden? in Maharashtra. To design advertising campaigns for its acquired brand Garden, CavinKare is currently scouting for an advertising agency.
Meanwhile, Parle Products and ITC Foods are strengthening their manufacturing and marketing operations to take on new rivals in competitive markets. With increasing competition, the market dynamics will soon change in the Rs 4,500-crore branded snacks sector in India. The sector is growing at 20% annually and the major players in this sector include, Frito Lay, ITC ‘s Bingo, Parle Products, Haldiram and Parle Agro’s Hippo among others. On CavinKare’s strategy, CK Ranganathan, managing director of CavinKare, said: ?We are now expanding our manufacturing capacity for Garden snacks. Due to capacity constraints, we could not take Garden brands to other parts of India. After increasing the capacity, we plan to launch Garden in South and West.? Incidentally, CavinKare is planning to invest Rs 500 crore in the expansion plans for all its brands in the next two years.
On the rationale behind Perfetti India’s foray into a new category, Sameer Suneja, managing director, Perfetti Van Melle India, said the salty snacks category has seen a lot of action in the past two years and has a huge potential to grow. ?We are proud to be the first Perfetti Van Melle subsidiary to earn a mandate to go beyond confectionery. We will leverage our marketing and distribution strength to provide differentiated product offerings to consumers like we have done for our confectionery business,? he said. Perfetti India’s brands include, Alpenliebe, Center Fresh, Mentos and Happydent.
