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CHENNAI, Jan. 24

GUJARAT Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF) which markets the Amul brand, has lined up many products for launch this year. According to Mr S. K. Kulkarni, Assistant General Manager (Sales), GCMMF, the products, which are being launched in phases, include Amul Infant Formula - I & II, mini cones and chocobars, frozen pizzas, Snow Cap Softy Mix and Kulfi mix powder.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Mr Kulkarni said the first three products had been introduced in Chennai too. Amul is the first brand where softy mix will be available in cartons and will be priced at Rs 50 for a one-litre pack unlike other brands which sell at around Rs 64 for a litre. The other products which the Rs 2,500-crore company is working on are tomato soup and kadhi, he said.

Claiming that Amul's "Janata pizza" was a huge success, he said that 1,000 outlets across the country were selling 30,000 pizzas a day. In Chennai, 1,200 pizzas were being sold everyday. Amul's success in this segment and the ice-cream segment was notable for the triumph of a domestic brand beating multinational players on the strengths of quality and price. He said all Amul products were much cheaper across all categories they were present in.

Since its launch four years ago, Amul ice-cream had sold 23 million litres till last year, Mr Kulkarni said. He claimed that the brand was well on its way to beating Kwality Walls, whose sales were stagnating, by 2005.

Despite using milk fat in its ice-creams, an expensive commodity which imparted rich taste to the ice-cream, the company managed to keep its prices 20-30 per cent cheaper than the competition which used vegetable fat which was much cheaper, he said.

According to Mr J. Rajan, Manager (Sales), Amul would capture 45 per cent market share this year.

Both Amul and Kwality Walls had 41 per cent share of the market currently, except in Chennai, where the latter dominated.

GCMMF, which is growing at a rate of 50 per cent, is also planning to launch Funny Faces, Sundaes, Smarties and Milk lollies under the Fundoo clutch of Amul products. Another new launch would be the Tempting Pack. Ice-cream cakes and an extruded ice-cream product called Megabite are also in the pipeline.

In the Rs 460-crore, 25,000 tonne infant milk substitute category, Amul is expected to do well as the main competitor, Nestle's Lactogen, is priced much higher than Amul's offering, which is Rs 105 for a 500 gm tin. Nestle, which has another similar product, Nestogen, has 62 per cent market share as of now. GCMMF's other offering, Amulspray, has 30 per cent.

The company also plans to introduce weaning foods later.

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