By Praveen Paramasivam<\/p>\n
March 23 (Reuters) – SLMG Beverages, Coca\u2011Cola’s largest bottler in India, could raise some of its prices if rising packaging costs linked to the \u200cwar in the Middle East are difficult to absorb, a senior executive \u200cat the firm said.<\/p>\n
The war is pushing up costs for key packaging materials from plastic bottles to caps, \u200blabels and cardboard boxes \u2014 with some packaged water manufacturers already raising prices.<\/p>\n
“If the war continues, the packaging material cost may continue to move up,” Rahul Kumar, deputy CEO at SLMG said in an interview earlier this month, adding price increases would depend on factors \u200cincluding how competitors respond and \u2060how consumers react to higher prices.<\/p>\n
The cost pressure comes after billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries revived a historic local cola brand, Campa, in 2023, \u2060tapping its vast retail network and a nationalist sentiment to ignite a price war.<\/p>\n
There is limited room to raise prices in the highly competitive soda market, which includes several national \u200band local \u200bplayers, Kumar said, adding there has not been \u200ba portfolio-wide price increase in the \u200cpast 7\u20138 years.<\/p>\n
He said SLMG will review prices in April.<\/p>\n
SLMG RAMPS UP CAPACITY<\/p>\n
Competition will boost India’s soft drink market by bringing in new consumers, according to Kumar. Redseer Strategy Consultants estimates the country’s non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages market could double to roughly $40 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n
To tap the growth, SLMG \u2014 which accounts for more than 22% of Coca-Cola’s India \u200cvolumes \u2014 plans to invest between 10 billion rupees ($106.58 \u200bmillion) and 12 billion rupees in each of four \u200bnew plants it plans to build \u200bover five years.<\/p>\n
The bottler’s sales climbed 49% to 67.73 billion rupees \u200cin fiscal year 2025, with net profit \u200bjumping 76% to \u200b2.06 billion rupees, according to company database Tofler.<\/p>\n
SLMG is now targeting net revenue of 100 billion rupees in 2026\u201327, as it expands in populous but lower\u2011income Indian \u200bstates such as Bihar \u200cand Uttar Pradesh, counting on low starting consumption levels and rising incomes to \u200bdrive greater demand for its products there.<\/p>\n
($1 = 93.8275 Indian rupees)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Praveen \u200bParamasivam in Chennai; Editing by Ronojoy Mazumdar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Praveen Paramasivam March 23 (Reuters) – SLMG Beverages, Coca\u2011Cola’s largest bottler in India, could raise some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,207,46,5305,2972,171717,171718,162520],"class_list":["post-353431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-india","tag-israel","tag-packaging-materials","tag-prices","tag-rahul-kumar","tag-slmg","tag-war-in-the-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}