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ACI Godrej Agrovet eyesTklOOcr turnover

Starts selling day-old chicks, shrimp, cattle feeds soon

Sohel Parvez
A joint venture agri-business company, ACI Godrej Agrovet Private Ltd, hopes to hit over Tk 100 crore turnover in 2008 as it is set to launch new products in a couple of months.
ACI Godrej Agrovet, which had a turnover of Tk 76 crore in 2007, will start selling day-old chicks, shrimp feed and cattle feed. The company now produces poultry and fish feed only.
"We are hopeful that our new products will help us achieve the target," said Puneet Pokhriyal, managing director of ACI Godrej Agrovet.
The ACI Godrej Agrovet, a 50:50 joint venture between India's $ 250 million Godrej Agrovet and Bangladesh's Tk 400 crore Advanced Chemical Industries (ACI), started operations in mid 2005.
ACI Godrej Agrovet is now competing with local and foreign companies such as Aftab, Paragon and Thailand-based CP Group's CP Bangladesh to capture a greater portion of the market, which has witnessed over 15 percent growth in the periods between 2001 and 2006.
But the growth, industry operators said, was hampered by last year's outbreak of bird flu in the country's Tk 10,000 crore poultry industry, which consumes the bulk of the total commercial animal feeds.
Shah Habibul Haque, in charge of Aftab’s poultry and feed businesses, said the demand for poultry feed can fall this year since farmers are yet to start poultry farming in full swing.
He however said entry' of large companies into the animal feed business will help expand tire market.
The ACI Godrej's Pokhriyal hopes that they will be able to hit the target despite a weakening demand scenario in the poultry industry.
"We were able to capture about 9 percent of the total poultry feed market last year. And adding these new products will help us win more share despite there is a weak demand scenario in poultry industry,"Pokhriyal said.
"We want to reach the target by increasing network among farmers. We are planning to hold about 10 meetings monthly with farmers to increase our reach," he said, adding the meetings will be organised jointly with American Soybean Association, a body that works for developing export markets on behalf of US soybean farmers. Pokhriyal, referring to Godrej Agrovet's experience in India, said the company will offer low-cost techniques to farmers so that they can bring down their production costs.
sohel@thedailystar.net