India’s ethnic snack-food giant Haldirams Nagpur is on a growth track, opening its own manufacturing facility for long shelf-life dairy products. Setting up a massive dairy facility with over Rs 100 crore investment, the company is clearly looking to expand its footprint from its existing markets of Maharashtra, Goa, and Chhattisgarh.
SIG, a leading systems and solutions provider for aseptic carton packaging, has been chosen by Haldirams to help expand its business offerings by leveraging SIG’s pioneering filling machines for aseptic carton packs. For the first time, the company has invested in its own manufacturing setup for filling products into aseptic carton packs, and SIG is supplying them with a high-speed CFA 1224 filling machine for combiblocXSlim carton packs from SIG. SIG’s filling technology offers excellent flexibility with multiple volume offerings, making it an ideal choice for Haldirams. Furthermore, SIG’s high-speed filling machine, able to fill 24,000 carton packs an hour, provides sufficient capacity for Haldirams to expand and grow over the next few years.
Commenting on the partnership, Sushil Agarwal, director at Haldirams Nagpur, said, “SIG offered us state-of-the-art technology with full flexibility of nine-volume sizes on one filling machine, all at high speed. This gives us a lot of options to pack a variety of products in a huge number of different packaging formats and sizes. And even more, the elegant, slim carton packs are very attractive and stand out on the shelf.”
Haldirams on expanding its beverage business
Starting from co-packaging its products through contract manufacturers, the company now aims to launch an even wider range of ethnic dairy and non-dairy products, leveraging on its existing retail network and distribution capabilities.
Neeraj Agarwal, marketing director at Haldirams Nagpur, commented, “Our brand Haldirams is a household name, associated with great quality and fantastic products. With SIG, we know that we will be able to extend this in a big way into the ethnic beverages category. We will be able to introduce beverages that consumers really enjoy, in the right-sized packaging that suits different consumption occasions.”
The product offerings will include buttermilk under the name Matka Jhatka, sold in 200 millimeter combiblocXSlim carton packs, along with Aam Panna, Jal Jeera, a variety of Lassi products. There are more innovations are now in the pipeline.
Vandana Tandan, country manager for SIG India, commented, “We are really excited about working with Haldiram’s Nagpur. Their ambition to create differentiated products has perfect synergy with SIG’s filling system, which allows maximum flexibility. We believe that with Haldirams, we will introduce some really innovative products and grow together in this exciting category of ethnic beverages.”
Haldirams is also setting up a range of widespread franchise networks in several Indian cities to offer everything from sweets and confectionaries to namkeens and juices. The flexibility that SIG provides, along with the ability of its machines to fill products with pieces and bits, like milkshakes with pieces of dry fruits or nuts, juice products with fruit bits, will help ramp up Haldirams capacities and offerings, based on the varying needs of Indian consumers.
