Amul goods to travel to Pakistan

The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Limited (GCMMF), which manufactures and markets products under the Amul brand name, has achieved 18 per cent rise in gross sales at Rs 2893 crore by end of the fiscal year 2003-04 against a sales turnover of Rs 2400 crore in the previous year.

Ice-cream sales grew 15 per cent growth in revenue terms driven by new products, with more planned in the premium segment in the current fiscal year. GCMMF was expecting income from icecream to rise to Rs 3400 crore by end of this year.

GCMMF products, currently sold in Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, would soon be sold under the Amul brand in Pakistan. They would be shipped through various points in Gujarat and Punjab.

"We have decided to make Amul the largest selling icecream brand in the world as the brand has grown substantially since its launch in 1997 in the domestic market and we are getting tremendous response from the icecream exports in Singapore while we are now taking Amul icecream to Dubai to cater to the market demands of the Middle-East countries. We are also equally excited about taking our products, mainly milk and icecream to Pakistan as this country has a huge market for milk and icecream and the local icecream brands do extremely well in Pakistani cities and towns," B M Vyas, managing director of GCMMF told Business Standard on Tuesday.

"The close proximity of Karachi from Jamnagar port in Gujarat and reaching products in other parts of Pakistan through Kandla port will not be an expensive affair for us because of the lesser distance while once the government opens business opportunities for the Indian organisations, we can reach products in Pakistan through Amritsar also. While we will try to push our entire range of products there, stress will be on icecream and milk," said he.

Vyas said Amul would shortly come up with range of premium ice-cream in the metros and other major cities. Products were being tailor-made according to the demands of the concerned markets.

"As Ahmedabad is a value-for-money market, our premium ice-cream may not be a major hit in this city but we expect a significant business from cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with premium ice-cream", he said.

Television commercials for the new range of icecream would go on air soon. A 15 per cent growth in revenue from ice-cream sales in the last fiscal added Rs 450 crore.

The federation will focus mainly on the domestic market as far as ice-cream sales were concerned. Amul will keep exploring export opportunities in other overseas countries as well.