Safal collaborates with oil marketing company to open fresh fruits and vegetable outlets in Bhubaneswar

While accepting to the request of the Department of Consumer Affairs, Mother Dairy, which sells fresh vegetables and fruits under the brand Safal, has cut down the price of onions by Rs 2 per kg in the National Capital.

Consumer Affairs Department’s direction to Mother Dairy came after taking note of rising price of onions. Presently, retail onion prices in Delhi are ruling in the range of Rs 30-40 per kg on tight supplies.

The Central government has also asked the co-operative Nafed (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) to boost supplies in the city from the buffer stock.

The department said, "The Department of Consumer Affairs advised Mother Dairy to roll back the prices of onions by Rs 2 across all variants. Mother Dairy agreed to reduce these rates from Rs 25.90 to Rs 23.90 for the loose variant and from Rs 27.90 to Rs 25.90 for the packed variant at all its stores in Delhi."

Safal, the horticulture arm of Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable, expects its new packaged frozen jackfruit to generate revenue of Rs 12 crore from next year onwards once the product is available across India. "We have launched our new product for the Delhi-NCR region at present. We will start rolling out frozen jackfruit across the country from next year and aim to generate revenue of Rs 10-12 crore in the first year," said Pradipta Kumar Sahoo, business head at Safal, Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable. He was speaking at the launch of the product in Delhi-NCR.

The newly introduced product is being directly sourced from Jharkhand and is being processed in Safal’s recently inaugurated Ranchi unit which was built with an investment of Rs 80 crore and commenced operations from February earlier this year. Besides Ranchi, Safal has processing plants in Delhi, Bengaluru and Ramgarh. Safal will process 100 tonnes of jackfruits for Delhi-NCR market this year and will ramp it up to 1,000 tonnes once it starts rolling out the product nationally next year. The product will be available across nearly 400 Safal outlets in Delhi-NCR along with modern trade and is priced at Rs 40 for a 300 gram packet.

According to the company, the frozen jackfruits are pre-cut vegetables which takes away the hassle of peeling and removing of latex from the vegetable. With frozen jackfruit, the brand is also launching Safal Easy Onions – dehydrated onions, for consumers across the Delhi-NCR region. The product contains dried onion flakes which contain less than one percent moisture and is equivalent to almost one-tenth of fresh onions weight, the company said. Mother Dairy procures 2.5 lakh tonnes of fruits and vegetables annually from 16 states with a 10,000-farmer base. The company also has third-party plants for food processing in states like Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. 

Mother Dairy, an Indian company that manufactures, markets and sells milk, milk products and other edible products is looking beyond Delhi NCR region as it senses growth opportunity in the eastern and western areas of India.

The wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) with sales of around Rs 7,200 crore, has drawn up a strategy -called 'purab-paschim' -to expand into new geographies, starting with Maharashtra.

To begin with, Mother Dairy has bought an old plant in Nagpur and is spending Rs10-15 crore to revamp it. It is also setting up milk procurement facilities in the area that is estimated to cost around Rs 30 crore.

Nagarajan S, MD of Mother dairy, said, "We are in talks with the Maharashtra government for a new plant in Bhiwandi that may require investment of around Rs 150 crore."

Apart from these, the company is looking to set up a plant for cut fruits and vegetables in Jharkhand for Rs 80 crore. This will help Mother Dairy tap into the Rs 1,100-crore frozen fruits and vegetables business.

Plans are afoot to test waters in the juice business in some of the pockets using cold press technology. On the cards are also innovations in fruit pulps, pastes and concentrates.

Mother Dairy is also working to revamp its Safal stores that currently sell fruits and vegetables. It is spending Rs 10-15 lakh per store to bring in modern retail practices. At present, Safal which operates around 300 stores in Delhi NCR, contributes around 10 percent (Rs 750 crore) to its revenues, while milk (Rs 5,000 crore), edible oil (Rs 1,000 crore) and value-added dairy products (Rs 1,200 crore) make up rest of its portfolio. Mother Dairy is aiming to open 250-300 milk booths in these new territories, as well.

The last date for exchanging the old currencies in banks was 24th November, 2016 and the never ending lines outside ATMs and banks were still visible up until 24th's evening. As many people could not visit the bank due to some problems or the other, they were left with only few options such as exchanging the note where it is still accepted or simply buy things from the huge outlets.

Many outlets were still accepting the old currencies or some were at least lending the change if they were offered the old currency notes but since 22nd November, 2016, some outlets such as Mother Dairy and Safal have stopped taking the old currency notes.

The outlets declared that they would not accept the old currency notes unless the buyer buys stuff for full amount.

Most people complained that some Mother Dairy and Safal outlet assistants claimed they didn't have enough stock now-a-days to sell.

On the other hand majority of Mother Dairy and Safal outlet keepers said that the problem lay with the government, because it had not provided them enough in small currency in order to transact business with the old notes.

As per reports published in IANS, one of the employee said, "We accepted the old currency from people and jotted down the balance on slips on our own initiative. Many people don't understand that we are not getting loose cash to provide them change."

One of the Safal outlet manager, said: "As the demand for Safal goods has suddenly shot up due to the large-scale use of 1,000 and 500 notes, we are not getting enough stock."

Another Mother Dairy manager said on the condition of anonymity: "If all the 800 Mother Dairy booths and the over 350 Safal outlets in Delhi and NCR (National Capital Region) were given Rs 100 notes to exchange with the old currency coming from customers, there would have been no problem for ordinary people.