Hatsun Agro on an investment spree to strengthen dominance

Says Hatsun Agro managin
27 February 2003

Chennai: In order to fortify its dominance in the southern liquid milk and ice-cream market, India's largest private dairy, Hatsun Agro Products, is on a major investment spree.

The company has drawn up plans to invest Rs 22 crore in expanding its liquid milk and ice-cream operations. This is apart from the Rs 3 crore it spent on the new quick freeze technology to upgrade its ice-cream. The company had spent Rs 18 crore to acquire another dairy sometime back.

A major chunk of the proposed investment will be to increase the company's milk handling capacity to 1 million litres per day by 2004. Currently Hatsun Agro handles around 6.5 lakh litres of milk per day.

Says Hatsun Agro managing director R G Chandramogan: “We will set up a 2.5-lakh-litre-per-day greenfield diary plant in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu at an outlay of Rs 10 crore. Most of the investment will be made from our reserves.“

From Tirunelvelli, Hatsun Agro hopes to enter southern parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala markets with its premium Arogya brand (standard milk). The company's other milk brand is Komatha (toned milk).

Chandramogan says Hatsun sells 5.5 lakh litres of Arogya and 1 lakh litres of Komatha every day. This translates into nearly 25 per cent of Tamil Nadu's branded milk market. The market leader is the state government-owned Tamil Nadu State Cooperative Milk Federation (Aavin) with a market share of 47 per cent.