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"GTFL to launch Breakfast with Protein - sausages, salami"
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Tuesday, 16 December, 2014, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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fiogf49gjkf0d Godrej Tyson Foods Ltd, is known for selling processed chilled chicken products under the brand names Real Good Chicken (RGC) and Real Good Yummiez. The company, the outcome of the tie-up between Godrej Agrovet Ltd (a part of the Godrej Group) and Tyson Foods Inc. of the United States, bases its innovations on consumer insights combined with food manufacturing expertise, and develops great-tasting chicken and vegetarian products.
Currently, its sales and distribution network is among the best in the industry, and it is looking forward to channelising the network and expanding to 100 cities.
Arabind Das, chief operating officer, GTFL, touched upon all these points and more in an e-mail interaction with Harcha Bhaskar. Excerpts:
Tell us about your processing plant, its capacity and expansion plans.
Godrej Tyson Foods offers value-added raw fresh chilled chicken and processed ready-to-cook (RTC) products at state-of-the-art processing plants in Bengaluru and Mumbai. These are International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 22000:2005 and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP)-certified.
We currently operate at an egg-setting capacity of about three million per month, a broiler-growing capacity of 7 million sq ft, and a processing capacity of 0.5-0.6 million.
Over the last four years, we have invested approximately Rs 60 crore on the expansion of hatcheries, and more importantly, on plant capacities by 80 per cent, keeping in line with the growth strategy and last-mile supply chain infrastructure – deep-freezers.
We plans to expand our business by investing in the last-mile cold chain infrastructure (chillers and freezers) in untapped markets (especially the Tier-II and III cities), because our mission is to make safe protein foods available at affordable prices to meet the nutritional security challenge.
What are the various vegetarian and non-vegetarian products you offer in the frozen food category? At what temperatures must they be stored? What are the shelf-lives of these products?
With each passing year, more women are getting into occupations to make them more independent, and hence, don’t have enough time to spend in the kitchen.
The woman of today is aware of the importance of quality protein to her family. With raw chicken from the wet market or roadside butcher’s shop, cleaning and sizing chicken after purchase is probably one of the most onerous tasks any homemaker faces.
Besides, it is difficult for her to buy chicken from such establishments, and hence her dependency on others increases to fulfill the family’s protein requirement.
Moreover, since they set out for work early every morning and return late in the evening, they have little time to prepare something for themselves or their family, especially for the children.
With this insight, both our brands, RGC and Yummiez, offers not only safety and quality, but also convenience, and provide them with many options and enables them to create interesting meal ideas for children and adults.
RGC is India’s branded raw fresh chilled chicken pioneer, and Yummiez offers a further processed frozen RTC range of chicken and vegetarian products.
The former offers tender fresh pre-cut chicken; portions such as drumsticks, boneless pieces and pre-marinated pieces, that are processed hygienically at our state-of-art plant and are ready to go in the pan.
The products have a shelf life of three days when they are maintained at a temperature of five0 Celsius through the supply chain and at the stores.
Yummiez has a range of RTC vegetarian and non-vegetarian products that go through a well-established -200 cold supply chain system and are sold through freezers in stores at temperatures ranging between -18 and -200 Celsius.
It has a wide range of products under four broad categories (Desi Treats, Global Bites, Kiddie Delights and Power Start). They have a shelf life of six months when stored at -200 Celsius.
We recently launched pre-marinated Chicken Lollipop, Malai Tikka and Tandoori Tikka under our brand RGC.
We also launched Mumbai Vada; Chicken Nuggets, and Hot Grill at affordable prices. Chicken Nuggets and Mumbai Vada are priced at Rs 160 per 500g pack and Rs 75 for a 300g pack (containing six pieces), respectively.
Where does the company procure its meat and poultry products from?
Our poultry operations are vertically integrated, and the company rears parent birds from day-old chicks; manages layer farms for disease-free parent birds; undertakes efficient hatchery operations for day-old chicks; supplies to our well-trained contract farmers along with feeds from our own feed plants, supports them with veterinary services for rearing, and takes them back for processing. We have a strong focus on research and development.
Tyson Foods has a large team of food scientists, chefs and culinary experts at Tyson Discovery Centre in the United States.
They make up the building blocks of a product in its journey, from idea to dining table and supports Godrej Tyson Foods’ product innovation process.
As part of our operation, we use one of the most widely-distributed breeds, COBB from COBB Vantress (a Tyson Foods Inc subsidiary stable).
It is reared on nutritious and balanced feed under the supervision of the company’s own veterinarians.
No wonder most of India’s best-known hotels and the quick service restaurant (QSR) chains choose to partner with GTFL.
What new launches are scheduled for the year 2015?
In line with our mission to provide safe, quality and affordable proteins, we would be launching three or four products under both brands.
In the immediate future we would be launching an array of cold cuts as a part of Breakfast Solutions with Protein.
It would include pre-cooked or cured meat – mostly sausages and salami variants, targeting the breakfast segment for consumers on the move or office-goers.
Tell us about the level of cold chain infrastructure to be introduced by Godrej Tyson. What is the investment allocated for this project? What is the unique selling proposition of these technologies?
Currently, RGC is retailed through 1,200 stores in the top seven cities in western and southern India, and Yummiez is retailed pan India through 5,000 plus stores.
Driven by our mission, we are focussing on making our chicken accessible to consumers across cities.
With the help of our cold chain partners, we have access to a wide network of cold chain infrastructure, and are currently present in 68 cities.
We plan to expand our distribution network of Yummiez products in order to penetrate deeper into the market, especially Tier-II and III cities, and aim to grow to 100 cities in 2-3 years’ time.
While the cold chain infrastructure is critical to all in the frozen food segment, Godrej Tyson would be investing in the last-mile cold chain infrastructure to scale up distribution and reach out to more consumers.
We have provided over 2,500-plus chillers and freezers to mom-and-pop shops for stocking and selling our range of Yummiez products, and have invested around Rs 7.5-8 crore on the same.
We are also designing freezers with less power consumption capacity and less maintenance cost. We would be investing in this area for the next 3-4 years to expand the market and make safe and affordable frozen poultry products across many cities.
Which are the various cities/outlets, where retail refrigeration would be installed?
Godrej Tyson aims to penetrate deeper into the market, especially Tier-II and III cities like Patna, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar and Nagpur.
We aim to grow to 100 cities in the next 2-3 years’ time.
What are the other retail/etail options Godrej Tyson would tap into?
In order to reach out to a larger population and make our brands available, our focus is currently to increase our presence in mom-and-pop and modern retail stores.
E-tailing opportunities are promising, but they are extremely challenging at the moment, because of cold supply chain management.
What is the size of the frozen food market in India? At what rate is it growing? What is Godrej Tyson’s share in it?
India would turn out to be the fifth largest retail market by 2025, and the urban population would touch 59 crore by 2030.
With the rise in urban population and changing food habits, the demand for processed food is on the rise.
The total processed food market in India is estimated to be worth $69 billion. Of which the frozen, pan-fried and fully-cooked market is estimated to be worth $300 million, and we are targeting to achieve at least 10 per cent of that in the next two to three years.
While the RTE and RTC frozen food segments are growing at around 20-25 per cent, we have grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30 per cent for the last three years.
The Indian meat and poultry retail rates are always fluctuating. How have the prices of Godrej products remained stable since their launch?
As a premium brand in the poultry space, Godrej Tyson has only increased its prices by six per cent, as against the 61 per cent rise in vegetable prices in November 2013. We have been using vegetables as an analogy to compare the cost of chicken.
To live our mission, we increased the price of Yummiez from four per cent to six months after 18 months, which was a negligible hike.
The government needs to have a two-pronged strategy to address tax issues and boost investment into technology for farm, food processing and cold chain infrastructure, especially last-mile infrastructure.
It would be difficult to control protein inflation with a high percentage of value-added tax (five per cent in Delhi; 15.5 per cent in Punjab, and 17.5 per cent in Uttar Pradesh) on frozen RTC and RTE products and hygiene tax (five per cent) on packed and sealed fresh chilled chicken and its products to make it safer and hygienic which is against the philosophy of the Food Safety and Standards Regulations (FSSR), 2011.
How different is India’s retail meat and meat product market compared to other countries? What is the scope for improvement in it?
The meat and meat product market, especially the poultry industry has been growing at a CAGR of 8-10 per cent for the last few years. However value-added products are growing faster, estimated at 20 per cent.
There are opportunities for pork and pork products that are safe and hygienic, and could be traced back to the farm and herd levels.
The challenges are getting the right breeds and acclimatising them to Indian climatic conditions, scientific breeding and rearing with modern technology. Guwahati-based Arohan Foods has made a beginning in this direction, with early success.
The government, along with the poultry association, needs to invest in mass media campaigns as a part of education about safe quality poultry meat consumption, in line with the National Egg Coordination Council’s (NECC) egg consumption campaign.
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