Amit Burman, scion of the Burman family, is betting big on their wine business with major plans including setting up a joint venture with the existing partner, Cantine Calatrasi of Sicily, in the coming future. Under the proposed plan, Nature?s Bounty, an Amit Burman-promoted company, will bottle in India wine in bulk that is being imported from the partner. Burman also has plans to set up own vineyards in Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra as part of launching their own domestic brands in the country.
Though the annual per capita wine consumption in India is too low, more companies such as UB, Seagram India, Cobra and Diageo have entered the market with bigger plans. Although the annual per capita wine consumption in India remains at 0.006 litres, the expected market growth of 25% to 30% by 2010 has encouraged companies to look at the sector aggressively. According to a Rabo Bank study, the current market of 7,85,000 cases of wine will grow to 1.7 million cases by 2010. Confirming the development, AS Wadhwa, CEO, Nature’s Bounty Wines and Allied Products, told FE, ?We have a proposal for joint venture, but it will depend on the success of the brands we are importing from Sicily currently. If the JV works out, we will import wines in bulk and bottle them in India. However, it is premature to give further details.? As of now, the company is marketing four brands from Sicily, and considering nine more brands for import, he added. Nature?s Bounty has also plans to launch domestic brands in the country, though the timeline has not been fixed yet.
The company makes four variants of the wine under Casuarina Creek brand, at Toorak Wineries located in the New South Wales region of Australia. The Sicilian brands being marketed in India include Maranfusa, D?istinto and Terre di Ginestra 2002. India currently imports 1.7 million litres of wine, mostly from France, Australia, Italy and the UK, out of which bulk wine forms a major share of imports at about 74% of the total imports. Currently about 50,000 cases of ‘bottled in origin’ wine is sold in India.