Fruit juice maker Manpasand Beverages is planning to invest Rs 1,500 crore to set up 10 new manufacturing plants in the country by 2020 in its effort to drive volumes, a top company executive said.
The company at present has six manufacturing plants across the country, of which three are in Vadodara, and one each in Varanasi, Dehradun and Ambala.
"We are planning to have a total of 16 plants in the country by 2020, and are looking to invest Rs 1,500 crore on 10 new plants," Dhirendra Singh, chairman and managing director, Manpasand Beverages, told PTI.
The city-based firm is also planning to enter new product segments like milk based sugar free drinks, glucose drinks and protein based drinks over the next three years to grow revenues and provide a significant boost to its growth journey across local and global markets, he added.
"For a country whose per capita consumption of cold drinks stand at mere six litres against 90 litres in the US, we need to have more affordable products to drive sales. We can beat MNCs only by creating volumes and flooding the market with desi brands," said Singh.
In a bid to tap rural markets across the country, the fruit juice maker has already expanded its nutritional drinks portfolio with a new brand Siznal a couple of months ago which Singh said has been receiving good response from the market.
It has also tied up with Parle Products to cross promote products, which would enable the firm to get access to the 4.5 million outlets of Parle Products spread across India.
With water being the most in-demand beverage of the future, Manpasand is planning to launch multiple facilities of packaged drinking water, according to Singh.
"India's bottled water market is growing at around 20 per cent annually and the company has planned to start monetising its water business," he said, adding, "A Rs 600-crore expansion plan is already underway across multiple locations and Manpasand would have double capacity by the end of 2018."
It yesterday reported 1.30 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 36.37 crore for the June quarter, against a net profit of Rs 35.9 crore during the year-ago period.
Total revenue stood at Rs 340.06 crore in the reporting quarter. It was Rs 392.94 crore in April-June 2017.
In May this year, the company's statutory auditor Deloitte Haskins & Sells resigned ahead of a board meeting scheduled for May 30 for consideration of financial results.
Deloitte Haskins & Sells had said Manpasand Beverages failed to provide them with "significant information" on the financial results for 2017-18.
"These issues are now things of past and we have already started working on our expansion plans within India and abroad," Singh said, adding it was an "aberration" and the company has already declared its results, audited by the new auditor.
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