L'Oreal India, which sells premium shampoos and cosmetics under brands such as L'Oreal Paris, Garnier and Maybelline New York, is setting up a hair colour manufacturing plant at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh.
"We are in the process of opening a second factory in the North. It will be at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh and will be only for hair colour, for which we plan a capacity of 100 million units," L'Oreal India Managing Director Jean-Christophe Letellier told PTI.
The plant will be operational by the middle of next year and will cater to all its brands that sell cream-based hair colours, he said.
The company has a manufacturing unit at Chakan in Pune also.
The French company enjoys 70 per cent market share in the cream hair colour-based category that is estimated at Rs 700 crore, and growing at over 19 per cent in terms of value and over 60 per cent by volume.
Letellier, however, declined to divulge the investment detail but said it is part of the company's investment of Rs 900 crore from 2012-15.
By 2020, the global beauty care major is eyeing a turnover of Rs 7,000 crore and is on track to achieve this target, Letellier said.
"We will go beyond Rs 2,000 crore this year. Our target is to be up to two or three times the market growth. During the last two years, the market itself has slowed down but we have managed to grow over two times the market, but at a slower pace than what we would expect.
"We believe India will gradually recover. The foundations for market growth, personal care growth are very strong and robust. We should anyway be observing this ratio of 2:3 times growth above 20 per cent every year and reach that goal by 2020," Letellier said.
The company had clocked sales worth Rs 1,800 crore last year and is expecting to grow at 20 per cent this year.
Acknowledging that India is not yet an evolved market, Letellier said it still features in the top five strategic countries for the group.
