Growth of Food & Beverage Packaging in India

The Indian economy has registered an impressive growth over the past 5-7 years. Such a period of growth is enough for initiating the demand towards lifestyle products. More so when 50% of the population is in the age bracket of 18-35 years and has a higher disposable income. There have been strong signals emerging through spending patterns to support this view. Demand for cheap products is gradually getting replaced by demand for quality products and this also holds true in the food & beverage industry.

Good quality packaging materials are almost essential if the food & beverage industry has to deliver to the consumers the superior quality being demanded. Not to forget that a good packaging is mandatory also to support the growth in volumes.

Leaders in the world packaging industry have just started to realize the potential that India has to offer in this area. Till now there had been no aluminium beverage Can maker in the country. The first one is expected to start only in 2009. Most steel food Can makers still rely on slow speed manufacturing, frequent changeovers, straight layout punching and a significant scope for improvement in decoration. Glass bottle capacities are largely concentrated with one big manufacturer. Paper packaging business is distributed amongst many small manufacturers operating on a regional basis. Situation is more or less similar in almost all forms of packaging. The reason being that originally the food & beverage companies focussed on price, not so much on technology, quality or service. But with the change in demand patterns the need is quickly focussing to have supply chain that can ensure consistent quality, delivery guarantees and price stability.

Realizing this emerging opportunity, Scan Holdings (http://www.scanholdings.com/) had started trading in quality packaging materials in a small way about a decade ago. As quality became focus, the business grew as Scan Holdings could quickly fill the gap by servicing the requirements from overseas quality manufacturers. This also provided the packaging leaders to have a better understanding of the India market while creating a demand for niche products. Today Scan Holdings can boast of being a leading player in 2 Piece Aluminium Beverage Cans, 3 Piece Steel Cans for food, Tinplate and Aluminium Easy Open Ends, Can Closures like Penny Lever Lid Assemblies (Ring Lid Tagger Assembly), Standard tinplate Can Ends, Aluminium Neck Foils, Aluminium Tagger, Speciality papers (vegetable parchment paper), Canning & bottling machineries and so on. While this has helped the industry to fill their needs, it has also helped Scan Holdings to analyze and monitor the change in trends quite closely. As the demands grow, a natural extension of this has to be start of local manufacturing operations in collaboration with World's leading companies.