Karnataka - Bangalore

Big demand for Indian processed chicken

Special Correspondent

Bird flu in South East Asia makes overseas buyers turn to India

Bangalore: The bird flu epidemic in South East Asian nations could be a blessing in disguise for the Indian poultry industry with demands surging from overseas buyers for processed chicken from India.

To meet the rising demand, the country's leading integrated poultry company Suguna Poultry Farm Ltd. is upgrading the capacity of its export plant for processed chicken to double the production from the existing 8 lakh birds per month to 16 lakh birds per month, Coimbatore-based Suguna's Managing Director B. Soundararajan said here on Wednesday.

"India is not affected by the bird flu. It is a blessing for the country," Mr. Soundararajan told presspersons.

With processed chicken prices rising in the global market from about $1,200 per tonne to $1,450 per tonne in the wake of the bird flu, Suguna's export revenues are expected to go up significantly this year from the current level of Rs. 50 crores to Rs. 55 crores, he noted.

Suguna currently produces two crore birds per month for its processed chicken business out of which eight lakh birds are exported mainly to the West Asia and the Gulf under two brand names.

It has a 14.5 per cent share in the domestic poultry meat products market estimated worth 1.7 million tonnes.

Mr. Soundararajan said that Suguna had been growing at a rate of 30 per cent annually, which is way ahead of the industry growth rate of 13 per cent per annum.

It clocked revenues of Rs. 813 crores in 2004-05 and during the first half of the current fiscal, the company's sales touched Rs. 508 crores, registering a growth of 41 per cent from a year ago.

Suguna has hired IBM and Oracle to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package for the company which the IT industry claims to be first of its kind implementation by an integrated poultry company in India, and perhaps anywhere in the world.

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