As per a report in Western Times, 13 companies, including majors such as PepsiCo, Coca Cola, ITC and Patanjali have committed to invest INR 68,000 crore or about USD 10.2 billion in India’s food processing sector. “We have signed MoUs worth INR 68,000 crore on the first day of World Food India and more investments set to come over the next few days,” said Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Union Minister for Food Processing Industries.
“These investments will help us realise the goal of doubling farmers’ income as well as generating massive employment in the food processing sector,” she said. While PepsiCo signed a MoU worth INR 13,300 crore for setting up a food and beverage plant, Coca Cola had committed to invest INR 11,000 crore in juice bottling infrastructure and fruit processing plants and equipment.
ITC and Patnajali committed to invest INR 10,000 crore each in the sector. Coca-Cola said while almost USD 800 million of the USD 1.7 billion contribution would be towards procurement of processed fruit pulp and fruit concentrate, the balance would be invested in creating infrastructure. ITC said as part of its INR 10,000 crore investment plan, it would be setting up 20 state-of-the-art integrated consumer goods manufacturing and logistics facilities in 12 States’ across the country where food products, including Aashirvaad atta, will be manufactured. GDP increase Sanjiv Puri, CEO and ED, ITC, said, “Improvement in agricultural yields and increase in the level of processing from the current 10% to 30% can increase the GDP by as much as five fold. Yes Bank said it would provide INR 1,000 crore financing to about 100 food processing projects in India with an average ticket size of INR 10 crore each. Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO, Yes Bank said, “India’s food processing industry is a vital economic growth driver and is playing a key role in doubling farmers’ value-added income.