Pepsi tieup with UB for barley plantation

Cola major Pepsi has decided to get into barley plantation along with UB group of Vijay Mallya. Cola major plans to spread barley plantation into 20,000 acres aproximately of land in the Punjab-Rajasthan belt in western India. The project will take off during the current year in north western states.

Abhiram Seth, Executive Director, Pepsi India Holdings Pvt Ltd, said the project was the first of its kind by Pepsi where it was not the buyer of the end-product but does business by providing farmers necessary infrastructure. In all other contract farming projects involving various products Pepsi has been the one which procures the end product from farmers.

Pepsi is also engaged in contract farming of potato for its in-house potato chip requirements. The potato project is spread over 30,000 acres in states such as Maharashtra, West Bengal, MP, and Punjab.

Other than potato, Pepsi is also engaged in rice production via contract farming, where the area under cultivation is around 15,000 acres and its spread in Punjab-Haryana belt. Pepsi exports rice in its own brand names Leher and Season's Harvest.

In Barley project, which also marks the company's entry into a different type of contract farming Pepsi would soon tie up with farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.