Parle Products, India’s largest biscuit maker by market share, is planning to expand its manufacturing and distribution network across the country.
The company, which has 40% of India’s biscuit market, wants to open new production facilities and increase the number of outlets to which it sells products.
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India’s biscuit market is worth around US$2.4bn and is growing at 14% a year, according to data from Euromonitor.
Mayank Shah, Parle’s group products manager, told just-food that the rural parts of India were driving the growth of the country’s biscuit sector and the company wanted to targets those parts of the country.
“With increasing income levels and evolving consumer preferences, rural India is driving biscuit market growth,” Shah said. “Considering the lower consumer penetration of bisucits in rural India, we plan to increase our distribution aggressively.”
According to Shah, 6.6m retail outlets stock biscuits and Parle sold to 5m stores. As further evidence of the potential for biscuits in India, Shah said per capita consumption was 2kg, far lower, he said, than in some Western markets. “This is way below Western countries, where it is 18-20 kgs. There is tremendous potential to be tapped. Considering the increase in future demand, we plan to increase our production facilities.”
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By GlobalDataParle has over 90 manufacturing sites in India, Shah said, and the company had identified some unnamed locations for new plants. When asked to name regions in India that Parle was targeting for increased production and distribution, he said: “We are the biggest player in this category. However there are some markets like North East, which are difficult to service given their geographic location and climatic conditions. We would like to improve our distribution and production in such areas.”
India’s biscuit market is attracting interest from multinational players. In March, for example, Kraft Foods launched its international brand Oreo in India.
