Thaindian News

Chennai, July 16 (IANS) Hoping for growth in its health and wellness product revenue this fiscal, biscuits major Britannia Industries Ltd has launched a new product - Vita Marie Honey Oats biscuit - which targets women, an official said Saturday.

“The adult health and wellness biscuit category is logging an annual growth of 20 percent. The segment is estimated to be around Rs.5,000 crore per year,” Anuradha Narasimhan, category director - Health and Wellness - told reporters here.

“Even a five percent shift in favour of our new product Marie Honey Oats by our Marie Gold biscuit customers will be good,” she added.

According to her, there will not be major cannibalisation as customers will be going in for a higher priced product.

The company is targeting women with its new product as a heart-friendly biscuit for women.

Launching the product here, Narasimhan said the biscuit will be gradually introduced in all the major cities soon.

She said 90 percent of the company’s turnover is contributed by the biscuits segment and the balance is chipped in by dairy, bread and other products.

Speaking about the market trend, the official said a significant shift is happening from Rs.3 glucose biscuits segment to Rs.5 cookies packet as the price difference between the two got reduced.

“Earlier, glucose biscuits accounted for 33 percent of the total industry biscuits sale while the cookies used to be 14 percent. Now cookie packets has grown to 25 percent while glucose biscuits have come down to 25 percent,” Narasimhan said.

She refuted that the company is going slow on its popular Tiger glucose biscuits because of the market shift, though the product is not available as earlier in shops.

Narasimhan said the company does not have any plans to increase the prices after it was revised upwards in February-March this year.