Tetra Pak to invest US$132 mln in new packaging material plant in India

Tetra Pak, the world’s leading processing and packaging company, provider for liquid food manufacturing, today announced it will be setting up a new world-class packaging material factory in India at Chakan, near Pune in western Maharashtra, India. The total investment in the new factory is expected to be around Rs 600 crores (US$132bln). It will be located 40 km from Pune city and is expected to start its commercial supplies from Q4 2012. The plant will be set up in a total land area of 45 acres and will employ world class manufacturing processes with among the most advanced technologies and equipment in the world. The total capacity of the new plant will be 8.5 billion packages per year, with the potential of scaling up to 16 billion packages across such popular carton packaging materials as the Tetra Brik® Aseptic (TBA),Tetra Fino® Aseptic (TFA) and Tetra Classic® Aseptic, making it amongst the top 5 packaging material plants for Tetra Pak worldwide. Besides supporting the expected strong growth in the Indian market, the plant will also support the company’s growth in other key geographies such as South East Asia and the Middle East. Over the last few years, Tetra Pak has seen a rapid growth in the Indian economy and specifically in the dairy and beverage industry. In addition, India is an important export hub, supplying packaging material to many overseas markets. Mr. Alejandro Anavi, Executive Vice President, Supply Chain Operations, Tetra Pak said, “We are committed to supporting our customers to meet growing consumer demand in these regions and all over the world.” He noted that “ In addition to the convenience of packed dairy beverages and fruit-based drinks, more people are becoming aware of the nutritional benefits of aseptically processed and packaged milk.” Tetra Pak has invested approximately INR 150 crores in India which includes establishing the existing packaging material factory in India, also near Pune. The existing facility, which has now been in operation for nearly 14 years, is reaching its full capacity. According to Mr. Kandarp Singh, Managing Director for South Asia Markets, “With strong economic growth, a dynamic consumer base and modernization of distribution and retailing there is high demand across all categories. With a capacity of 8.5 billion in the new factory, we are gearing up to reach the growing demands of the consumers.” Amongst various other facilities, the new packaging material plant will also have a machine rebuilding centre, which will be the third such centre in Tetra Pak to provide technical services such as start-up support and machine renovation to our customers. We will also have a Product Development and Innovation Center (PDIC), which will have a laboratory, a pilot processing plant and a pilot packaging plant to meet the product formulations and development needs of our customers. Said Mr. Singh, “We will continue to focus on providing our customers with the latest packaging solutions.“ Together with the capacity of the present location, this will make the Indian operations Tetra Pak’s biggest manufacturing facility in the South and South East Asia region. The new plant will have some of the environmentally efficient features such as the use of renewable and non-conventional energy and materials, heat recovery to generate air conditioning and rain water harvesting.