Milk is industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s newest business muscle and his corporate dairy is looking for refrigerator space at mom and pop stores, in addition to vending from Reliance Retail stores.
With the beginning of sale of ‘Dairy Pure’ through general milk retailers, as opposed to mostly through Reliance Retail-owned stores now, the company expects further growth in this business.
The milk business turnover grew nearly 3-fold to over Rs 178 crore last financial year.
Living up to its reputation of entering a market with a competitive edge in terms of pricing, Reliance Retail is trying to lure customers with 10 per cent extra milk in every packet than that of its rivals for the same price.
Besides Reliance stores, the milk brand is also being sold “through general trade (including milk retailers) in Haryana, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, NCR (National Capital Region) and Himachal Pradesh,” the spokesperson added.
On their part, rivals are welcoming a large corporate in the market saying it would benefit both farmers and customers, but are not perturbed by the competitive pricing as they consider it too small a player as yet to eat into their pie.
Still, Reliance Dairy Foods Ltd, the milk and other dairy products subsidiary of petrochemicals and refining major Reliance Industries, saw its turnover grow nearly three-times last financial — from Rs 65.77 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 178.05 crore in 2008-09.
However, its loss after tax widened from Rs 3 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 4.5 per cent in the last financial year.The company believes the business would grow further as it was also looking at expanding product portfolio as also processing and packaging facilities.
“We see this business further growing with the extension of our product portfolio. Reliance Retail currently has its processing and packaging facilities in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan and would look at expanding this over a period of time in other states,” the spokesperson said.
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