Global audit and advisory firm KPMG has predicted that the USD 70bn food retail industry will more than double to USD 150bn by 2025. Speaking at the first edition of Food Retail, Logistics & Packaging Summit & Awards organized by the Supply Chain Leadership Council, Ramesh Srinivas, Executive Director, KPMG said, “High growth in food retail is limited by sub- optimal supply chain caused by low investment in the sector”. He added that the food sector, in spite of its large share of GDP and the consumer basket, only received 3.3% out of the gross FDI flows in India between 2000 and 2010.
Purvin Patel, COO, RK Foodland explained that the cold chain industry is constrained by quality supply claiming that 22mn tons of capacity is not sufficient to serve the current 31mn tons of demand. He predicted that the size of the current cold chain market is Rs. 13,500 crores which is expected to grow to Rs 54,000 crores in 2015.
Vishal Sharma, MD & CEO, Tuscan Ventures unveiled his fund’s investment in Cold Star Logistics at this summit while explaining that his decision to incubate a cold chain solutions providing company was based on that the number of sizeable, quality and scalable targets in this industry are few and far between.
Several industry veterans including Vivek Sarabhai of Cadbury-Kraft Foods, Lt Colonel Vijay Nair of Hypercity and Ashu Khanna of Marico spoke of how innovation is helping to accelerate growth in this sector.
Vivek Sarabhai highlighted the importance of supply chains driven by customer focus and feedback informing that Cadbury’s extreme focus on the maintenance of a cold chain is based on that, in the past, almost 69% of consumer complaints were related to chocolate damaged by heat.
He explained that a number of technological innovations lie at the core of collaborative partnerships between service users and vendors and are changing the way cold supply chains are maintained.
These include remote temperature monitoring, door open alarm and SMS or email alerts in cases of procedure violations. Another example of packaging innovation discussed was that a cardboard box designed with 2:1:2 ratio offers the same volume with less board consumption which reduces packaging material cost and enhances load capacity.
The discussions went a step beyond when participants discussed the possibility of replacing all corrugated box packaging in the food industry with shrink wrapping saving cost and increasing transportation efficiencies.
Abhijit Upadhye, Sr. Director – National Supply Chain, McDonalds India suggested that trust and values driven partnerships with longer term views will succeed in the wake of the unconventional pressures that the expected growth will put on operations and supply chains related to food retail in India.
Pradeep Dubey of Snowman’s, India’s largest cold chain company, informed of his company’s growth plans from the current 16,500 pallets capacity to more than double in the next few years. Most cold chain companies present in the summit suggested similarly aggressive plans.
Later in the evening, Cyrus Broacha and Gautami Seksaria, Founder & Partner, Supply Chain Leadership Council, hosted India's first food supply chain awards titled KPMG-SCLC Food Retail , Logistics & Packaging Awards' 10.
The list of winners, selected by an expert group from KPMG out of scores of nominations, is as below.
1. Food Supply Chain Manager of the Year (Manufacturer/Processor) - Cadbury and Pepsico (Handed by Manish Saigal,
Executive Director & National Industry Head – Transportation & Logistics, KPMG*)
2. Food Supply Chain Manager of the Year (QSR) - Yum Restaurants (Manish Saigal*)
3. Food Supply Chain Manager of the Year (Modern Format Retailer) - Future Value Retail (Manish Saigal*)
4. Food Logistics Personality of the Year - Ashok Kumar, VP - Supply Chain, Pepsico India (Purvin Patel, COO, RK Foodland*)
5. Cold Logistics Service Provider of the Year – Snowman’s (Manish Saigal*)
6. Cold Chain Personality of the Year - Pawanexh Kohli, Chief Cold Chain Solutions Officer, Gati (Purvin Patel*)
7. Cold Logistics Tech Enabling Company of the Year – Bristlecone (Vishal Sharma, MD & CEO, Tuscan Ventures*)
8. Food Packaging Innovating Company of the Year - Yum Restaurants (Krishna Shete, Head – Marketing, R K Foodland*)
9. Food Supply Chain innovating company of the year – Marico (Krishna Shete*)
* Award handed by
After the event, Gautami Seksaria said, “I am confident that this recognition of excellence and innovation in the wider field
of food retail, supply chain and packaging will encourage more of it in the coming years”.