Ruchi Soya Plans Palm Processing Unit In State

 Ruchi Soya Industries, India’s largest cooking oil and soya food maker, plans to set up an oil palm processing mill in Odisha at an investment of Rs 30 crore.
“We will initially set up a 10 tonne per hour fresh fruit bunches (FFB)  processing mill next year. We are exploring for a location  in districts like Mayurbhanj, Balasore and Bhadrak. The plant will take two years for operations”, said Dinesh Shahra, founder and managing director, Ruchi Soya Industries.
The company has started oil palm cultivation on 28,000 hectares land in Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak and Kendrapada districts for which the company has entered into a tripartite agreement with the state government and farmers.

Ruchi Soya processes about 0.52 million tonne oil palm per annum.

Apart from Odisha, Ruchi Soya is working with the farmers in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Mizoram, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. In Andhra Pradesh, Ruchi Soya has access to over 30,000 hectares of plantation. The company operates four oil processing mills in Andhra Pradesh with aggregate FFB processing capacity of 125 tonne  per hour.

“We also have plans to set up an oil refinery in Odisha”, he added.

On hiking the prices of edible oils in the wake of rupee weakening against the dollar, Shahra said, there is no concern for price rise as the international prices of edible oil are coming down and in India, the price is also falling because of the good domestic oil seed crops this year.

The company imported about 1.4 million tonne of both crude and edible oil last year.

Just 2/250:Ruchi Soya,ITC fastest homegrowns

Only two home-grown Indian companies — Ruchi Soya & ITC — have made it to the top 250 consumer companies in the world, says a survey by Deloitte titled ‘Global Powers of the Consumer Products Industry 2013’.

While Ruchi Soya has been ranked at 121, ITC stands at 150. For Ruchi Soya that manufactures edible oil and soybean products, it’s an improvement of 54 positions, Last year, the company stood at 175. On the other hand, cigarette and consumer goods maker, ITC has slipped by seven position in this year’s ranking.

If we look at the list of 50 fastest growing company in the world, Ruchi Soya has been ranked at 13, followed by ITC at 39.

While Ruchi Soya has recorded a 66% growth in sales in 2011-12, ITC’s net sales jumped 17.5% in the same period.

This is based on a survey by Deloitte on the data available till June 2012. For a company to make it to the list of top 250 consumer product companies, it has to have a minimum sale of Rs16,600 crore and has to register at least a 7% growth in sales on a yearly basis.

The report points out that as sales in the other established markets are taking a beating, companies from the emerging markets have started taking the lead in the fastest growing company in the world and going forward, this trend is likely to continue.

Dinesh Shahra, managing director of Ruchi Soya, said, “Improved branded sales, better sales realisation of oilseed extraction, effective control on the costs and favourable business sentiment helped us to get better performance in the past one year. We are making our efforts to have good performance on a sustained basis in the times to come.”

An ITC spokesperson said: “ITC’s aspiration to be the No. 1 in the FMCG sector in its new consumer goods businesses is supported by its relentless effort to build world-class brands that create, capture and retain value in India. These brands have earned significant consumer franchise and in addition, we are looking at enhancing the competitiveness of the entire value chain.”

Ruchi Soya partners Japan cos for edible oil

To introduce a super premium edible oil brand which Indian consumers have never witnessed, Ruchi Soya Industries, India’s leading food and agro-based FMCG player, has inked a joint venture with J-Oil Mills Inc and Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC), both from Japan.  Under the terms of agreement, a joint venture company would be formed soon by the probable name of Ruchi J-Oil in which Ruchi Soya would have a majority stake of 51%. While J-Oil, the technology partner in the joint venture, would have 26% stake with the remaining 23% proposed to rest with TTC.  “This alliance is an important step towards our business strategy of expanding our product portfolio by bringing value added and healthier products. We will provide raw materials and necessary marketing and distribution assistance to the JV. J-Oil will provide technical assistance and TTC with its rich global experience will provide management assistance for internal control and access to international markets through its network,” said Dinesh Shahra, Founder and Managing Director, Ruchi Soya.

In the joint venture, however, Ruchi Soya would look into manufacturing, branding sales and distribution with the company’s existing expertise in these areas. For this, however, Ruchi would transfer its existing soya processing business in Shujalpur in Madhya Pradesh to the joint venture to fetch Rs 40 crore. The objective of this joint venture unit would be to introduce new edible oil for Indian market which local consumers have experienced in the past, a Ruchi Soya official said. The JV will be managed by a board consisting of representatives from all the three companies. The JV plans to start supplying products to the institutional customers by the end of 2013 and launch high quality consumer products for the Indian markets in the second half of 2014.

Justifying the need of such joint venture, Sumikazu Umeda, President & CEO, J-Oil Mills, said, “The main purpose of this investment is to start our first ever business activity overseas in a promising country like India. J-Oil sees India as a vast and fast growing market and has plans to establish as a leading company in high quality value added edible oil segment.” “Ruchi J-Oil JV provides us appropriate crossover opportunity to leverage our business networks, product portfolios, and skill sets. We create Global Vision 2020 in which we identified three business areas that we expect sustainable growth. We aim to expand food business in life and community field,” said Yoshiki Miura, Managing Director, TTC.