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<pre>The Times of India Online
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Dalmia to import 5 lakh litres of olive oil

PTI[ SUNDAY, JANUARY 25, 2004 10:43:22 AM ]

NEW DELHI : Cashing in on an anticipated 40 per cent growth in India 's
olive oil market, corporate major Dalmia Continental will import at
least five lakh litres of the commodity in 2005.

The Dalmia group company is also setting up a bottling plant near Pune
with a five lakh litres a day capacity, expected to be operational by
November-end 2004.

"Being a health friendly cooking oil with required usage barely
one-third of that of other oils, olive oil's market potential is huge.
We plan to import from Italy 60,000 litres this year and half a million
litres in 2004-05," president and COO, Dalmia Continental, Narayanan
Rajagopalan, said.

He said though imported in bottles under a tie-up with the Nichola
Pantaleo Company, the sales would be under Dalmia's own brand,
"Leonardo".

By the end of this year, when the Pune bottling plant comes up, a large
part of the imported olive oil will be packed in tamper-proof bottles,
in India itself, he said.

The company was planning re-exports to South and Far East Asia, he said,
adding Dalmias were also making an aggressive bid to capture the west
Asia and African market.

"However sales to west Asia and Africa will be directly after making
purchases in Italy , because it is not cost effective to route it
through India ," he added.

Rajagopalan announced plans to make investments of around Rs five crores
till end of the current fiscal and over Rs 100 crore in the next five
years.


He said the company expects to make operating profits in three years but
as of now the olive oil is being underpriced by them vis-a-vis the
landed cost of the commodity.

He did not disclose the price of import but said the company was
responsible to have brought the domestic prices down from Rs 360 plus
taxes to Rs 290 inclusive of taxes per litre.

Rajagopalan said even though olive oil was at least three times higher
priced than its nearest competitor sunflower and safflower oil which
were sold at around Rs 90 per litre in the market, it was not a matter
of concern.

This, he said, was because one-third of the quantity of other oils was
required to cook food in olive oil.

Both the extra-virgin and pomace olive oil will be imported by the
company but the latter was more suited for the Indian conditions on
account of being neutral in taste and flavour.

He said the market was huge and at present more than 10 million litres
of olive oil was being imported into India annually.

Rough estimates are that 600 million litres of cooking oil are used in
India every month, he said adding research shows that the olive oil
market is poised to grow at a significant 40 per cent annually.

Its biggest strength is that its the healthiest oil and greatly reduces
risk of heart diseases due to higher level of monosaturated fats.


© Bennett, Coleman and Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.
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