Danisco to invest Rs 3,20-mn innew units

New Delhi: Danisco India announced the opening of two new manufacturing units of functional systems and enzymes, with an investment of Rs 32 crore to cater to its Indian and South Asian markets.

This investment consists of manufacturing plants, labs and offices. The labs will be used to test the products in the local conditions and support Danisco’s customers in India and surrounding countries. The new facilities have been opened in Sohna, Haryana.

India being the largest milk producer in the world with an annual production of more than 100 million tonnes, is a huge potential of value added dairy products. Functional systems plant will initially produce blends for the ice cream market and then will move on to other dairy products.

The enzyme plant will make enzyme blends to satisfy the needs of the Indian market for grain processing, textiles, laundry detergents, fuel ethanol, animal feed and food and beverages.

Danisco India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of $3.8-billion Danisco A/s, the Denmark headquartered international producer and supplier of food ingredients, sugar and industrial bio-products. The company has direct presence in 47 countries and an employee base of 9,700 worldwide.

Mr Neil Prasad, Managing Director - South Asia & the Gulf States, Danisco India, said, “For Danisco, timing for our two plants is ideal. The changes in government legislation in processed food have spurred our functional system investment, while the obvious importance of biotechnology in South Asia has resulted in our enzyme investment. We have also used the most up to date blending technology in our plants with versatile capacity.”

The industrial enzymes segment of an estimated worth of $75 million (Rs 300 crore), is another quickly growing market in India. Danisco wants to seize this opportunity by opening an enzyme manufacturing plant, operated by its Genencor Enzyme Division.