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September, 2006 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India |
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Dumex Up For Grabs
FMCG major, city pharma co in race for acquiring co
Dumex India, the company that owns Farex and Protinex brands in the country, has now given the sell mandate to an investment bank. An FMCG major as well as a leading Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company are learnt to be in the race for acquiring the company.
Dumex’s move to exit India comes less than a year after it acquired Farex from Heinz and at a time when the company was setting up a Rs1bn plus state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for nutritional supplement products.
The exit strategy has been drawn up by Dumex’s new owner, Royal Numico, Europe’s largest baby food maker. Numico acquired Dumex’s parent company late last year and it has decided to focus on China, Asia’s largest nutrition market, for the time being, rather than on India.
Dumex was in its investment phase in India and was said to have aggressive growth plans but change in ownership has resulted in a total change in strategy. For the buyer, the acquisition will bring the Farex and Protinex brands into its portfolio and also enable it to consolidate its presence in the baby food and nutritional supplement segment by giving it access to a modern plant.
In India, the infant food category had been stagnant and under pressure for a while. To add to its woes, the government slapped a ban on advertisement of baby foods after it realised that mothers were getting influenced by these ads and turning to tinned baby food instead of breast feeding their babies. Nestle’s Cerelac and Amul’s Amulspray are the leading brands in this segment and together the two companies control almost 90% of the baby food market.
Date: 24-Jun-2006
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