Nestle India’s new Managing Director, Suresh Narayanan, said to the media that it is his top priority to bring Maggi instant noodles back on the shelves. With this in mind he is working towards a re conciliatory solution with the food safety authorities. Also, he hopes that the authorities will understand that the mood of the company is not to confront them but the company hopes to cooperate with them with due respect.
Nestle has been in India for a 100 years and never has the company shown any disrespect to the law of the land or to the regulatory authorities. The company is therefore hopeful that they will be able to find a solution to the on-going issue. However, presently Nestle India has taken up the issue of the Maggi ban by FSSAI in the Bombay High Court and so there is no way to know how soon the Maggi imbroglio will be sorted out. The outcome of the hearing by the Bombay High Court is likely soon.
Meanwhile the entire supply chain and distribution network for Maggi has been stalled and the entire business segment dealing with Maggi has been dismantled by the company. Nestle has also had a chance to introspect about the recent ban and have been asking themselves the questions about where they went wrong, where they were right. The company is going to take the recent happenings as a learning process so that it does not have to face any such incidents in the future again.
In the quarter just ended on 30 June 2015 Nestle has reported a standalone loss of a little more than Rs.64 crore. This is because the ban on Maggi instant noodles has also hit the sales of other Nestle products in India. Last fiscal the company had posted a net profit of almost Rs.288 crore during the April –June quarter. This is the first loss that the company has reported in the past 30 years.
Nestle India say that they will be increasing their budget for advertising. They will also be increasing their market spending on other products like dairy confectioneries and chocolates to push growth in these areas.
Leave a Reply