Naidu inaugurates Mondelez plant in Sri City

The Dollar Business Bureau

Mondelez India Foods Pvt Ltd, formerly Cadbury India Ltd, inaugurated its largest plant in the Asia Pacific region at Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh, inaugurated the factory on Monday.

“Built with an investment of $190 million, the multi-category manufacturing facility, initially, had the capacity to produce around 60,000 tonnes of the brand’s Dairy Milk chocolate, yearly. The production is expected to touch 2.5 lakh tonnes annually, in three phases, by the year 2020,” informed Chandramouli Venkatesan, Managing Director Mondelez India to the reporters.

“Mondelez India initially plans to use the facility for domestic consumption but later make it into an exports hub in Asia,” Venkatesan said.

The facility currently employs 4oo people that will increase to 1,600 employees in the next five years.

While inaugurating the plant, Naidu said that the investment by Mondelez International in Sri City has brought to the state advanced technology and world class manufacturing capability, as well as generating jobs and empowering the local communities.

“The firm already has considerable commitment to the Andhra Pradesh government and has been associated with farmers of the state to grow cocoa, over the last 20 years,” he said.

He prodded the company to prepare a plan to enhance the supplying capability of inputs such as milk powder and cocoa, and to set up a Research & Development (R&D) facility at Sri City.

Mondelez International, a $30 billion company, sources 40 percent of its cocoa inputs from the domestic market that employs over 1 lakh farmers across four southern states.

Spread over 134 acres, the Sri City facility is the company’s seventh in India. Besides, the company operates six other manufacturing facilities in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.