Welcome to Food Infotech, today we have Rupali Gupta, Quality Head of Kerry Ingredients for the Indian subcontinent. Today we would like to ask her a few questions about what she does and also about Kerry Ingredients.
Q1. We would want to know a little bit about your background and how were you drawn to Kerry?
Ans. Sure. In terms of my background, interestingly or non-interestingly there are no surprises my formal education is in Food Science and Technology only, and after completing my graduation I opted for specialization in Food Science and Nutrition. We are in best of the times where we are seeing a paradigm shift in food processing industry basically in the field of food safety, Quality, Health and Nutrition. I started my career 21 years back with a small Delhi based bakery and I was fortunate enough to work with global big players like Panacea-Biotec, McDonald’s, and currently I’m working for Kerry Ingredients.
Q2. Kerry Ingredients is also called as the Brand behind Brands, so we would like to know what is the reason behind this saying?
Ans. As you have rightly pointed out we are a powerful brand which is behind equally powerful brands in the ingredient space and I am really happy to say that we are one of the largest in this category. Although it is sometimes a bit complex also because we cater to multiple customers across multiple technologies but yes on the basis of our ingredients. Big powerful brands develop products, launch them in the market and whenever they get success it really feels great.
Q3. Thank you. Coming back to your role as a food safety expert, tell us how as the Quality
Head of the Indian subcontinent, how do you handle food safety and Quality in India and what are the challenges that you face?
Ans. So let me again go back to my educational background, I would say educational, background helps, but in our field two things are very important. One is, it is changing dynamically and we have to stay updated and understand what are the emerging challenges. For example, even in this conference my focus is around food fraud and vulnerability, it is one of the emerging challenges.
One was the educational background that helps me and second your work experience and that too of diverse fields. As I told you I was lucky enough to work with some of the best brands and got the opportunity to cover the entire spectrum. For example, I have managed restaurant chains and now I’m into ingredients and nutraceuticals and so these experiences are actually helping me to understand the complexities and how to address them.
Interestingly we also work in many, many countries and so we have that kind of regional and global support also. We keep on getting best practices from other countries and ensure we have all the compliances in place in whichever country we are doing the business. So basically, educational background and experience helps. In terms of challenges if you ask me to pin point 2 or 3 challenges in my role, I will still put safety on top most priority because India is still evolving.
There are some areas where we are struggling for internationally recognized standards so food safety is an area where we need more advancements or maybe more awareness also. So, food safety is one challenge and second for people like me is ever-changing regulatory landscape.
You people might have seen some recent controversies around added sugar, labelling, mis-labelling, and some other issues. So we have to be very agile to respond to this changing regulatory landscape and this I will put as the second challenge, third challenge I will say cold chain. Maintaining the cold chain and transporting frozen products from one area to another. From one end of India to another is still a challenge and it is a big business opportunity also. So I would encourage if government can put more players or investment in cold chain it will help us.
Q4. Now coming to Kerry Ingredients, please tell us the kind of ingredients you are into.
Ans. So let me start from the core strengths of Kerry, as I told you we started like a Dairy co- operative so we are very strong in any kind of dairy ingredients. Whether it is 100% Dairy products, Dairy flavour, some kind of emulsifiers, and this is definitely one of our strengths. Second, strength area for us is flavours, we do all kinds of flavours, whether it is spray dried, encapsulated, or liquid flavour, flavoured syrup, or a flavoured sauce.
So, flavours are the second big strength of Kerry. Even in terms of flavours, we are pretty strong in a couple of things like vanilla, cocoa and citrus so these are a couple of key core strengths of Kerry. I mentioned Dairy, I mentioned flavours, the third thing I would say is at least Asia-Pacific we are pretty strong in bread crumbs and coating.
You might not be aware that it is a very big category, any kind of Patty you eat in any QSR will have a lot of coating. Either it is a Fish and Chips, Aloo Tikki patty or a mixed veg patties, we have big baking lines where we do different kind and shapes and sizes of bread crumbs and coating. So, broadly these are the 3-4 areas where Kerry is really strong.
Q5. So, when you said about flavour, ma’am are those artificial, nature-identical or natural?
Ans. Right now we are catering as per customer needs, if a customer wants a clean label ingredient product, we do it, but to be very honest with you, this field is still evolving. So, this natural and artificial is not a single point of consideration, in some businesses you have to be very mindful of shelf-life also.
For example, in sauces category, if you remove the preservatives, it will severely impact the shelf-life of the product. Sometimes there are interactions between flavours, preservatives, emulsifiers, but yes, we are committed to increase the positive products portfolio in our business. When I say positive nutrition, I mean to remove any kind of colours, flavours altogether.
Q6. Sure. As you told us earlier that Kerry Ingredients caters to big FMCG giants, so can you share the names of some key partners?
Ans. I don’t know how much I can reveal because there may be a conflict of interest between brands but maybe competitors here and there. But I can assure you a couple of things that we are pretty strong in spice blends and seasonings. We are brand leaders in the chips category, noodles, and snacks category.
I’m sure you are clever enough to pick which is the number one, two or three players in these categories. Secondly in the QSR space I told you we are available across the burger chains, pizza chains, or café outlets. Unfortunately I won’t be able to name them.
Q7. What is the revenue of Kerry Ingredients?
Ans. We closed last year at 8.2 Billion Euros.
Q8. As you had mentioned Kerry Ingredients is Please tell us the names of the countries where Kerry Ingredients is present?
Ans. Kerry Ingredients is based out of Ireland and started as a Dairy Cooperative. So from Ireland it has spread to multiple continents and countries starting from North America. I may not be remembering the exact number of countries and locations but let me talk closer to our home, India. India is part of APMEA which is Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Our sub region is generally called as MISA which is Middle East, India, and Africa and that regional head office is based out of Dubai. As far as manufacturing plants are concerned, in India we have 3 plants, two are for food and one is for pharma coating.
Q9. Coming to the final question, ma’am what is the future plans for Kerry?
Ans. We are pretty clear, on what we want to do, there are 3-4 focus areas, it may sound repeated but sustainability is definitely one big thing on Kerry as a group agenda. We are putting our best efforts to see how sustainably we can produce products. Secondly what we touched upon is positive nutrition, we are still figuring out how we can improve the nutritional quotient of our products. Whether it is a clean label preservative which will help in increasing shelf-life and subsequently reducing food wastage.
So, this is another positive nutrition, sustainability, besides this we are also quite keen into health-based ingredients, like solid science-based data points. Also bringing more and more options to people maybe probiotics, herbal extracts, combination of this, so preventive health.