Ahmedabad, Nov. 18 With a bumper crop of 40 to 45 lakh tonnes of basmati expected this year, the rice export may be around 25 lakh tonnes in the current fiscal.
Production of basmati rice is expected to go up due to increased area under cultivation and sowing, said Mr Gurnam Arora, Joint Managing Director, Kohinoor Foods Ltd that sells ‘Kohinoor’ brands of basmati rice.
Already 1.8 mt have been exported in the current fiscal, he told Business Line on Wednesday. Basmati crop in all three varieties of traditional, Pusa and Pusa 1121 has been good in most areas and its production is expected to go up 1.5 times.
Last year, production of branded basmati was 25 lakh tonnes and 20 lakh tonnes of this were exported.
In fact, prices of traditional basmati variety might even fall, he said. With matters being sorted out with Iran, the export demand from West Asia region for basmati is expected to go up from 12 lakh tonnes last year to 20 lakh tonnes.
However, Pakistani basmati is also turning competitive due to a favourable exchange rate. On the other hand, the stronger Indian rupee may harm exports, Mr Arora said. In India, the domestic consumption of branded basmati rice is 5 lakh tonnes a year, of which Kohinoor’s market share is 20 per cent.
Besides, around 7-8 lakh tonnes of basmati from unorganised sector is also consumed in the country. Western India accounts for 40 per cent of the country’s consumption of basmati, including Gujarat’s 30,000 tonnes.
Kohinoor, listed on the BSE, recently expanded capacity of its paddy processing facility in Haryana by 16 tonnes to 60 tonnes an hour with an investment of Rs 30 crore.
The company is expecting to increase its turnover from Rs 650 crore last fiscal to Rs 1,000 crore by March 2010, with exports contributing half of this.
In the winter season, when people in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra store freshly cropped rice for the whole year in the three-month-long ‘Bharti season’, the company has this year introduced three qualities – Platinum, Gold and Silver – along with promotional prizes through scratch cards.
Mr Arora said Kohinoor’s food business, including pre-cooked, frozen and ready-to-eat products, garnered around Rs 60 crore last fiscal, 95 per cent of it from exports.
It has also introduced brown and organic basmati varieties for health conscious people.
On March 30, 2008, Kohinoor Foods entered the Guinness Book of World Records by cooking a 14,060-kg vegetarian biryani, the world’s largest, at a stadium in New Delhi.
Source : Business Line