Parle Agro, maker of Frooti, eyes Rs 10,000 crore turnover, major product launch by 2022

Beverages major Parle Agro, the maker of popular brands such as Frooti and Appy Fizz, plans to set up a new plant and introduce one more new major product in the next two years as it gears up to touch a turnover of Rs 10,000 crore by 2022, according to a top company official.

The company, which clocked a turnover of Rs 6,500 crore in 2019, had recently introduced its new offering B-Fizz, a malt-flavoured fruit juice-based drink in the market and expects an overall growth of 10 per cent this year.

"In general as a company we don't go into a very large number of new product launches. We really stay quite focussed on select product launches and try to be able to build scale with them. By 2022 we would perhaps see one more new category that we would open," Parle Agro Joint Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer Nadia Chauhan told PTI.

In terms of capacity expansion, she said, "We don't just expand in existing factories. We also expand through greenfield factory projects in new locations. Normally you would see us putting up one factory per year, just on the basis of the growth that we are currently experiencing."

The entire Appy Fizz and now B-Fizz category have been an area where the company has seen maximum growth and expansion, Chauhan added.

The company is currently evaluating to have the next manufacturing unit to be set up in Vijaywada, Andhra Pradesh.

It has already set up greenfield facilities in Sitarganj, Uttarakhand and Mysore, Karnataka, which are the largest in terms of size and manufacturing capacity amongst all of the company's plants.

Parle Agro has a total of 67 manufacturing units in India, out of which nine are company-owned beverage units and one is a standalone preform manufacturing unit, with the rest being franchisee units.

Chauhan said the company has set a target of clocking turnover of Rs 10,000 crore by 2022 and is banking on its newly launched brand B-Fizz to play a significant role in it.

"Today one of the interesting signs that we see is that it (B-Fizz) is almost delivering at par with Appy Fizz, which today is more than a Rs 1,500 crore brand...We are seeing that B-Fizz is showing as strong a delivery and contribution like Appy Fizz," she said.

"We do hope that with this launch and all the other initiatives that we are quite aggressively driving in the market, by the end of the year at an overall level, across all our brands we should be able to end with 10 per cent growth from 2019," Chauhan said.

While she did not comment on the investment for the proposed new plant, Chauhan said in terms of marketing investment in the rest of the calendar year 2020, the company would be spending about Rs 40 crore on the marketing of B-Fizz.

As for 2021, she said it "will be a time when everybody will sort of regroup and look at restructuring and planning for 2021, after having gone through 2020. So it will be a fresh perspective for 2021. Normally, if we look at last year we spent about Rs 250 crore to Rs 300 crore on marketing..."