We organised a visit to the new Britannia plant and the new R&D centre located in Bidadi near Bengaluru. Visit to both the facilities helped us understand better what Varun Berry is trying to do in terms of in-house manufacturing, innovation and cost efficiency. It also enabled us to appreciate the sheer scale of opportunity available in the Indian food space for efficient and innovative companies.
The comprehensive R&D center at Bidadi enables the company to improve in areas ranging from new product innovation to faster commercialization in all existing and new categories, improving manufacturing efficiencies in line with best global practices, reducing lead time for change in processes, improving on packing/packaging and thus ensuring both shelf life and safety, ensuring greater compliance with FSSAI and other regulatory requirements, and enabling reverse engineering of any product worldwide.
The Bidadi manufacturing facility is currently operational with one biscuit line ; when operational with four biscuit lines in November 2016, it will be the only such facility of Britannia in India.
The emphasis — not just at the Bidadi plant but also across many of the other new plants — is on scale benefits, ensuring better quality, safeguarding on hygiene standards and raising the ability to scale up on innovative products.
