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Indian bakery industry in high growth orbit
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Wednesday, 22 April, 2015, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Manish Malhotra and Vaibhav Verma
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fiogf49gjkf0d The bakery industry is one of the high growth segments of the country. As a result of changing eating habits in urban India during recent years, due to social considerations and the improved standard of living and also as a result of the influence of globalisation, bakery industry in India is going through impressive growth rates.
With the demand for bakery products growing exponentially across the country over the past few years, the bakery industry has been experiencing an upward spiral with changes in product pattern as per emerging trends. In fact change is the key word right now in the bakery industry when it comes to ingredient variants, machines & equipment and marketing services.
The Indian bakery industry is the largest of the food processing industries, estimated to be over Rs 7,000 crore accounting for a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15%. The industry has traditionally been and largely continues to be in the unorganised sector contributing over 75% of the total production.
Line production
In almost all south Asian countries, particularly in India and China, the line production of baked products is increasing, with the number of traditional craft bakeries churning or kneading out products like biscuits, cakes, rusk or commercial breads and also home bakeries on the rise providing their neighbourhood with personalised products and adding personalised creative value. The bakery industry, valued at Rs 69 billion, has achieved the third position in generating revenue among the processed food sector in the country. Bread and biscuits hold about 82 per cent of the total share of the bakery industry.
Beginning with ingredients, we see a major shift from the use of plain flour (maida) to whole wheat, multigrain or fortified flours. Although Indians have learnt baking from the Europeans and the Europeans did use all purpose or plain flour for baking, the time has come where Indians should bake with whole wheat flour which is healthy and rich in nutrients for consumption; the Indian consumer needs to customise his mind and taste buds and adapt it to a healthier alternative. This means by altering the basic ingredient, processes, techniques and equipment the service and marketing strategies will witness change.
Today many leading retail chains have food courts with bakeries and cake shops alongside. The consumers seek more luxury products with low fat, better appeal, better taste, with more natural or organic ingredients like multigrain, fresh fruits, chocolate or milk. There is rapid change in food preferences from end-consumers to gear up with the pace of changing demand - definitely a challenge the industry faces.
Micronutrient deficiencies tend to exist where diets lack diversity and intake of animal products is minimal. Therefore, poor sectors of the world, of developing or even developed countries, may have poor diets, even in conjunction with sufficient energy intake. One of the consequences of industrialisation is reduced intake of many micronutrients, because of the large dependence of the food industry on salt, sugar, vegetable fats and refined cereals, all of which are poor sources of vitamins and minerals. Individuals whose diets depend heavily on these products often do not meet the daily requirement of many micronutrients. Micronutrient malnutrition is a widespread problem throughout the world, and it has both health and economic consequences. In poor countries, this deficiency is exacerbated by systemic infections and parasitic diseases that reduce nutrient absorption and biological utilisation. In the last 100 years, clinicians and nutritionists have had to shift their focus from protein sufficiency to energy sufficiency and now to micronutrient sufficiency.
Fortification of widely consumed staple foods offers one of the simplest and most practical methods to combat micronutrient deficiencies for both poor and wealthy societies. One of the earliest reports of food fortification dates back to 4000 BC, when the Persian physician, Melampus, added iron filings to sweet wine to strengthen the sailors’ resistance to spears and arrows and to enhance their sexual potency. Six millenniums later, in 1833, the French chemist, Boussingault, recommended the addition of iodide to salt to prevent goitre in South America. Vitamin A was added to margarine in 1920s in Denmark. Vitamin D was added to milk in the United States in 1930s to help prevent rickets in children. However, its disadvantages are incurred user cost, low compliance, and self-dose adjustment. The supplementation strategy certainly has greater specificity of intervention and allows better prescription and increased risk of toxicity. Fortification strategy has the advantage of universality of the intervention and greater compliance.
Drawbacks of fortification strategy
The dose is a function of food quantity consumed; lower specificity; and varying standards legislated for each country and quality control and regulatory challenges pertaining to fortification levels with the manufacturers of fortified foods.
Why fortify bakery products with micronutrients?
- Easy reach to specific target group
- They can be centrally processed
- Low cost technology - premix addition relatively easily and ensures an even distribution within batches
- Are used relatively soon after production, thus having better vitamin retention and lesser sensory changes due to the need for only a small overage
- Market-driven fortification: Business-oriented initiative
- To increase nutritional value and appeal to the health-conscious consumer
- Has potential to play positive role in public health but has been very modest in developing countries
- Expected to have an impact in the near future, largely as a natural consequence of increasing urbanisation and availability of such foods
- Market share
The market share of organised line production is about 20-25%, which is growing. This offers a plethora of opportunities for the technology providers in the country. Bakery units are unevenly spread in all major states of India. The bakery units are mainly concentrated in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.
Industrially advanced states like Maharashtra and West Bengal have large number of bakery units. In the organised bakery sector, more and more ingredients and finished products are processed using large machines with computer-controlled systems giving uniformity in product quality and resulting in lesser wastage.
An increasing number of bread improvers are already offered as oil-based and water-based ingredients, so that they can be processed automatically. This is one reason why over the last two-three years, developed bakeries have replaced margarine (solid fat) with liquid oils for certain products (in the production of toasted breads, for example).
Challenges for fortified products
- Premix Stage: Blending ingredients with different particle sizes is that bulk density and variable particle sizes can lead to segregation.
- For fat soluble nutrients like Vitamin D, it is necessary to have some fat and/or hydrocolloids to suspend it properly into a finished product’s matrix.
- Baking Process: Several fortificants like calcium pose rising challenges in products like bread and muffins by disrupting bubble formation stage.
- Product Quality: Incorporating fortificants may lead to alteration in taste, texture, shelf life and thus over all product acceptability.
The shift
Till the last decade, bakery industry’s development was slow due to the lack of skilled manpower & technology, poor quality ingredients, outdated baking technology, and deprived competition, whereas the early 21st century has proved to be a landmark for the industry. Throughout this decade we have seen a colossal shift from manual production to the use of automation. Setting up a bakery business might look costlier but in the long-term it benefits not only financially, but also in providing job opportunities to many and develops the consumption habits of the vicinity. The bakery sector offers returns of 300 times if one can run the business tactfully.
The trend in traditional equipment is witnessing a deep decline as compared to new kinds of equipment with high speed production capacity are being used today in modern baking units. This equipment produces better quality and quantity within a shorter duration of time; for example, deck and reel ovens are being replaced with rotary rack ovens, which are economical in fuel consumption and easy to operate thereby making it convenient for them to be operated by semi-skilled workforce.
Similarly traditional mixer-blenders are being replaced with spiral or high-speed mixers giving better emulsification quality and thereby saving time. Equipment is available easily at an affordable price with usage of lesser power or fuel thereby making it cost-effective. Various types of tabletop mixers with state-of-the-art technology are being used for production of cakes and biscuits.
New technology, superior equipment and better quality of ingredients require specially trained skilled labour well-versed with the latest technology. Specialised manpower training should be a mandate and available at the workplace. IBCA provides 13 different short-term and long-term courses in baking and baking technology.
Further, new methods of continuous kneading are logical for line production. Continuous kneading is mostly applied in production lines with a high output of a restricted number of products (deep-frozen products, for example). The traditional tunnel oven also remains the standard for industrial line production whereas multi-level ovens based on thermo-oil are winning market share in medium-sized bakeries with restricted space and a large range of products.
Baking used to be done by bakers using individual raw materials like flour, water, sugar, eggs, fat, salt and other minor ingredients to enhance products. Although baked products stay much longer than most of the other cooked foods, there are problems one faces time and again. Today as a commercial baker, one needs to develop more variants of products, consistently at the least possible time and achieve profit. The problem is solved by large commercial companies offering pre-blended mixes like bread, cakes, cupcakes, doughnut, creams, frosting, filling, and toppings. These premixes cover a variety of products, help in reducing labour time, result in lower storage, lower inventory, more variants, easy working, consistent quality and reduction of specialised manpower.
(The authors are asst professors at Banarsidas Chandiwala Institute of Hotel Management & Catering Technology)
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