The Gujarat Co-Operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, which owns the Amul brand of dairy products, is setting up a plant in Sri Lanka. This will be GCMMF's first unit outside India.
GCMMF will initially invest Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) in the plant, which will manufacture butter, cheese, ghee and milk powder.
"So far we have been exporting Amul products to the US, Middle-East, Singapore and the UK through our distributor network. Now we are eyeing for a bigger market share as the Amul brand has proved its worth. Sri Lanka will be our first destination outside India where we are going to set up a new plant," said B M Vyas, managing director, GCMMF.
Vyas, who is just back in Gujarat after a trip to Europe to survey the market for Amul there, said at present the project work preparation for the Sri Lanka plant is going on.
"Next month a team of GCMMF officials will visit Sri Lanka to finalise the project and we hope to make the plant operational in one year," he said.
It is also been learnt that following the Sri Lankan plant, Amul will set up manufacturing facilities in Gulf countries like the UAE, where it enjoys a larger market share in butter and ghee.
"The process is on and we can talk about it only when we finally set up the manufacturing plants," Vyas said.
However, Amul will not set up plants in the US, UK and other European countries in the near future, where the existing norms will not be favourable for the company.
At present Amul brands are being sold in the US through a distributor at Illinois and it also has a distributor in Singapore.
There are six distributors in the Middle-East which cater to the market needs of Dubai, Muscat, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Bahrin and Doha.
"Among Amul's basket of products, it exports mainly pure ghee, butter in both 500 gm and 100 gm pack, shrikhand, full cream milk powder, gulab jamun, cheese and malai paneer, and it is planning to make all these products in the Sri Lankan plant. In a later stage, Amul may also make lassis, bottled milk, pizzas and soups, depending on the market response," a source said.
GCMMF, which had posted Rs 2,746 crore (Rs 27.46 billion) sales in last fiscal against Rs 2,256 crore (Rs 22.56 billion) in fiscal 2001-02, is aiming at a 17 per cent growth at the end of the current fiscal to reach a turnover of Rs 3,200 crore (Rs 32 billion).
