Soft drinks production back to normal, says Pepsi bottler

New Delhi: RJ Corp, one of the country’s single largest consumer facing groups operating PepsiCo’s entire bottling business, 500 KFC and Pizza Hut outlets, and ice-cream brand Cream Bell, will take a hit of close to 15 per cent in annual volumes this financial year, though its factories have resumed full capacity manufacturing, RJ Corp chairman Ravi Jaipuria told ET in an interview.“We have lost about 15 per cent of our annual business by volumes in the months of March and April, which we won’t be able to recover. However, all our factories have now resumed full production starting last month since this is peak season for us,” Jaipuria said. He said while the soft drinks business has reverted back to 80-85 per cent of business now, when the restaurant business will revive remains “uncertain.”RJ Corp-owned Devyani International Ltd (DIL) operates Yum Restaurants‘ brands KFC, Pizza Hut, TWG Tea parlours and food courts in airports and malls. DIL had acquired 74 KFC restaurants from Yum over the last two years, and had committed an investment of Rs 1,000 crore on expansion earlier this year. The lockdown was announced one month after Yum Restaurants acquired minority stake in DIL.76375420Jaipuria said DIL has delayed its IPO by a year.“It is difficult to forecast when the restaurant business will return to normal levels since it’s dependent to a large extent on malls and cinema theatres. But we will not pay pre-Covid rentals; compromises will have to be made since we are dealing with hundreds of landlords,” he said.Retailers and restaurants have been renegotiating rentals with malls and landowners since India went into a complete lockdown starting March 25. Though the curbs have been eased this month, footfalls at malls and restaurants that have opened remain very low with Covid cases escalating in large cities like Delhi and Mumbai.Jaipuria said DIL had to put some employees on furloughs, but the group would get most of them back once the business returns to normal since they are trained staff.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3hvwezY