October 10, 2014
Bright future seen for India''s poultry industry
There''s business opportunity in India''s poultry industry.
This is according to the managing director of Suguna Foods Ltd, G.B. Sundararajan, who spoke at the 56th National Symposium organized by CLFMA of India, held in the port city of Kochi.
Suguna Foods is the biggest broiler producer in India and the 12th-largest poultry company in the world.
India, he said, is now the fifth-largest poultry producer in the world, and its US$10-billion market is growing. It produces 3 billion broilers a year, and its chickenproduction has a 9% compound annual growth rate. Table egg production also grows at 8% annually, Sundararajan said.
Sundararajan said the future looks bright for the industry as India''s strong economic growth is increasing consumers'' purchasing power. By 2025, he said, India is estimated to have 583 million people living on incomes above $4,380.
India exports chicken to Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, which all have strict food-safety standards.
This means, he said, that the levels of antibiotic residues in Indian chickens are far below the maximum residue levels prescribed by the EU and the US, which have the most stringent food-safety standards in the world.
One thing, though, that puts the Indian chicken at a disadvantage is the government ban on the use of feeds from genetically modified soya, Sundararajan said.
He said countries that allow soya as a GM crop, such as the US and Brazil, have a huge cost advantage over India in this regard.