Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai

Shelke Group of Companies is looking at increasing the manufacturing of its packaged drinking water brand – Oxycool – in Maharashtra. For the same, the company will be setting up three manufacturing units in Nagpur, Latur and Kolhapur within the next two years. Presently, the company is manufacturing its packaged drinking water at its Pune facility and supplying to Pune, Mumbai, Satara, Nagpur, Ratnagiri and Sangli. An investment of Rs 15 crore will be made for this expansion.

Speaking about this expansion, Nilesh Shelke, managing director, Shelke Group of Companies stated, “Presently we are producing 84,000 bottles per day; 7000 cartons daily with each carton containing 12 bottles of one litre each. We will expand the capacity by adding three more facilities and manufacturing 84,000 bottles at each facility.”

Oxycool, which is sold across retail outlets and institutions in Maharashtra, is also being supplied to airlines like Air India and Jet Airways. “We started supplying to Air India one-1.5 months ago and Jet Airways three-four months ago,” added Shelke. The company’s present focus for Oxycool will be Maharashtra and in the future it will explore other states like Karnataka and Gujarat.

Commenting on competing with other brands like Bisleri, Aquafina, Bailey, Shelke stated, “Our USP is our quality and hence there is good demand for it in the market.”

Apart from its packaged drinking water brand – Oxycool, the company also owns the OneDay brand which includes different types of soft drinks/ cold beverages. The company plans to expand the OneDay brand by introducing milk byproducts and snacks like flavoured milk, butter, cheese, chips, etc by 2017.