Nijjer Agro to foray into concentrates

Alarmed by fall in production of tomatoes in the last financial year, Amritsar-based Nijjer Agro Foods Ltd, one of the leading manufacturers of tomato paste, is planning to venture into the production of concentrates of pear, apple and carrot to reduce dependence on tomatoes.

The company is hopeful of starting commercial production of concentrates within three months and is planning to supply them to leading juice manufacturers.

In the last financial year, the production of the tomato crop fell by 20-25 per cent in Punjab. The crop was affected by blight (a crop disease), which hit several districts of the state. It was severely affected in Hoshiarpur and Gurdaspur districts.

Talking to Business Standard, Nijjer Agro Foods Managing Director Satbir Nijjer said, "Due to fall in the production of the tomato crop, our processing unit suffered a loss, so we are planning to diversify into fruit concentrates for covering up our dependency on it."

When asked about the choice of the fruits, he said, "These produce are locally available in abundance."

As per the industry figures, there would be a demand of 50,000 tonnes of fruit concentrate per year. He said, "We would supply these concentrates to the leading juice manufacturers in India like Tropicana."

At present, it is producing pear and apple puree according to the domestic demand. It also plans to do co-packing with other companies and enter the retail private labelling business. At present, it is doing private labelling business for Pantaloon and very soon it would start for Nestle as well.

The company has the capacity to produce 25 tonnes of tomato sauce a day. Besides that it has manufacturing facility to process milk products, with a capacity of 150,000 litres per day.

The company is a leading supplier of tomato paste to Nestle and pizza sauce to Domino's. The plant can produce about 5,000 tonnes of tomato paste a year, tomato being a seasonal crop.

Nijjer said there was demand for about 24,000 tonnes of tomato paste a year in the domestic market and but due to bad crop our production was severely hit.