Future Consumer enters into health food category with Hain Celestial JV

Kishore Biyani-led Future Consumer Limited (FCL) has entered into a joint venture with Tilda Hain India, part of the US’ Hain Celestial Group, to manufacture and sell food products in the health and wellness space in India.
The joint venture between Hain Celestial’s wholly owned subsidiary – Hain Tilda and Future Consumer will be looking at three broad categories of the fast moving consumer goods sector –organic chips, baby food and non-dairy products.
Talking on the partnership, Kishore Biyani, Group CEO, Future Group said, “Hain Celestial is one of the most respected companies in the organic and natural segment and we are excited to establish this partnership with Hain Tilda in India. Together, we will be able to provide Indian consumers with products that set the standards for good taste and are healthy too.”
The American food company has entered into a 50-50 partnership with Future Consumer and looks to have its first factory set up in Tumkur Karnataka by the end of this year. This factory will be starting production on the Terra vegetable based chips which would bring down the cost of the product to nearly less than Rs 100 per pack which is currently at Rs 400 per pack. The production capacity at the factory is 150 kg per hour of output and the chips would be retailed across company-owned supermarket chains like Big Bazaar and Foodhall.
The company will be focusing on manufacturing Hain Celestial’s ‘Earth’s Best’ in the organic baby supplements while in the non-dairy segment it will be focusing on products like Dream. The baby food and non-dairy milk products will be imported for now but work is in progress to start manufacturing those in India as quoted by Kishore Biyani.
The Joint Venture and India expansion plan is expected to  provide Hain Celestial with an opportunity to grow distribution of the company’s brands and products throughout the country. The company will also explore the possibility of sourcing and processing more organic and natural products from India through this partnership.
Commenting on the JV, Irwin D Simon, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Hain Celestial Group said, “We believe this venture would bring great benefits to Indian farmers as we will be working on educating them so as to improve yield and cultivate new vegetables to manufacture Terra chips alone in association with Future Consumer Ltd.”
The company will use Future Group’s existing infrastructure and Big Bazaar outlets for distribution of its food products which will be available all over India.
Talking on the positive growth prospects with India, Simon adds, “Very few other markets are growing at 11 percent rate and with a population of more than 1.3 billion that also harbors 650 millennials. India is an important market for us where the consumers are now focusing on healthy living with health foods.”
Nevertheless Simon further said, “We will focus on bringing US brands to India and even source India for a lot of agricultural products that we can use in the rest of the world.”
The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. is a leading organic and natural products company with operations in North America, Europe and India. The company is present in over 65 countries globally and has a turnover of $3 billion annually. The company has registered sales worth $1 billion in the UK and about $2 billion in the US.