Keyur Virani, Director , Balaji Wafers Pvt. Ltd.
Looking at present scenario how are you planning to expand your area of sales and production points across the country?
We are definitely planning to expand our business north-wards by establishing new manufacturing plant in UP. In next two years we shall be investing around 500-600 crores for the expansion of our business there. Along with area expansion, we are also foraying into new range in flavours, peanut products has been launched. So, to broadly speak Balaji is expanding in area-wise as well as product-wise.
There is new technology being introduced every day in the market for increasing automation and food safety. What is the latest edition at your end in your existing units or in upcoming plants?
We had done end-of-line automation in our existing plant. End-of-line automation means with the help of automated-robotic arm carton-packaging placing product packets inside the carton. All this is done through automation hands-free. We are also planning to installed automation for palletizing in all the three facilities. In near future you can expect the speed and efficient work at our plant.
It has been observed that there are not many national brands in the snacks and namkeen segment in India. What are the reasons behind the slow expansion of the companies?
It is not a slow expansion. Snack food industry is working in quite a significant volume. The national brands are also working hard and achieving their targets, they are performing quite well with good growth rate. This is because the market is so vast that and we all have a long way to go, that’s why regional players have good growth rate. Compared to the 3000-4000 crore MNCs operating Pan India, what we mean by regional players of the industry is that regional company is worth 200-300 crores scale company is also not a small firm. That regional player supplies the products within that area according to the business and taste of the region, for him that particular growth is suitable. Even we, Balaji Wafers too are regional players, slowly and steadily we too will become national players.
Is the slow expansion also because of the local taste preferences? How import is the market research before going for expansion in newer territories?
Every states taste differs according to its particular geographical condition. All states have their own taste profile. Every area has its own flavours, taste, shapes in farsan. Preference of material depends on the availability of the millets, cereals, legumes and other food grain. People develop tastes of their staple food according to the cultivation of certain foodgrains.
If you look the list of tastes and flavours, you will find more than 1000 glossaries of the tastes, flavours and spices. So all the SKUs for every snack maker is not possible. It’s a challenge to set up a plant in different region as we are et to see what the people of UPites prefer taste-wise.
In the lockdown period and thereafter during the unlock process, there was an acute shortage of labour in the food factories. What measures you are applying now to reduce manpower dependency?
As mentioned earlier, the more system-driven process through automation, more is the efficiency and lesser dependency on manual labour. This is non-dependency and more automation is going to beneficial in future. Covid or no-covid, to increase the growth rate we have to grow in business, and to grow we have to give more output and automation is the only solution to it. We are dealing in food manufacturing and we are talking of bulk production and it is here we have to take care of Food safety & hygiene. And all this is possible with automation only. Quality consistency is at its best with automation and lesser hand contacts. It took us nearly 10 years to be here where we are today. All this achievement does not have standard solution, it’s pure hard-work that pays in the end.
At packaging level, metal detectors should be mandatorily installed. Safety screening should be adopted.