Date:31/03/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/03/31/stories/2004033102300300.htm

Back Mother Dairy ice-cream forays into Punjab, UP

Our Bureau

New Delhi , March 30

SIGNALLING its intent to expand beyond the confines of the national Capital, the National Dairy Development Board-owned Mother Dairy is launching its ice-cream in select towns of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Mother Dairy, which diversified into ice-creams in October 1994, is currently the market leader in Delhi, with a 71 per cent volume share, followed by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation's (GCMMF) `Amul' (15 per cent) and Hindustan Lever's Kwality-Walls (9 per cent). The company today launched its ice-cream in Punjab, covering Chandigarh, Mohali, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar. The UP launch, scheduled on April 1, will initially be limited to Kanpur and Lucknow. "We will, to begin with, source the entire ice-cream from our Patparganj plant in Delhi. Once volumes reach a critical stage, we will start outsourcing from the cooperative unions affiliated to the Punjab and UP milk federations," Mr Paul Thachil, CEO of Mother Dairy India Ltd, told Business Line.

According to him, the organised segment in the identified towns of Punjab was in the region of Rs 15-16 crore (ex-factory realisation levels), with Amul, Kwality-Walls, Vadilal and Verka being the major players. The market size was Rs 10-12 crore in Lucknow and Kanpur.