By Ratna Bhushan & Ishani Duttagupta| 28 September 2014, 10:01 AM IST
The festival season has kicked off but it's more famine than feast for food and beverage marketers. The reason for the gloom is the stringent implementation of food safety norms by the government regulator, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI); this has resulted in delay over approvals of import consignments, a lot of which have been held up at ports.
The list of F&B firms hit by the FSSAI is long: GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, Ferrero Group, Tata Starbucks, Lindt chocolates, Cadbury, Mars, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi, William Grant & Sons and Brown Forman. Around 300 containers worth roughly Rs 18,000 crore are stuck at ports just ahead of the festive season, said a top official of a chocolate importer, requesting not to be named. This, he said, includes consignments of imported chocolates, liquor and canola oil.
With Diwali just around the corner, liquor majors and restaurants are in a blue funk over their depleted stocks of imported premium liquor. But before the festival of lights comes the German beer festival Oktoberfest, which has already kicked off. "We usually serve a dozen German beers during Oktoberfest. But with imported consignments having been sent back due to non-compliant food labels, there is no visibility of any stock this year and we have only four German brands," says Rahul Singh, founder and CEO, The Beer Cafe.
The FSSAI labelling regulation requires the logo/license number, ingredients, importer name, batch number, packing and expiry date of imports to be displayed. Shipments have been sent back from the ports following even minor errors in the labels. In fact, the FSSAI has been very stringent in enforcing the law since July 2014, as the companies started building up stocks for the festival season.
Singh doesn't see the FSSAI issue getting resolved soon. "Most of the large beer companies in the world have a standard label that is globally acceptable. The India orders are meagre and these large corporations don't want to change labels only for India," he points out.
source
The list of F&B firms hit by the FSSAI is long: GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, Ferrero Group, Tata Starbucks, Lindt chocolates, Cadbury, Mars, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi, William Grant & Sons and Brown Forman. Around 300 containers worth roughly Rs 18,000 crore are stuck at ports just ahead of the festive season, said a top official of a chocolate importer, requesting not to be named. This, he said, includes consignments of imported chocolates, liquor and canola oil.
With Diwali just around the corner, liquor majors and restaurants are in a blue funk over their depleted stocks of imported premium liquor. But before the festival of lights comes the German beer festival Oktoberfest, which has already kicked off. "We usually serve a dozen German beers during Oktoberfest. But with imported consignments having been sent back due to non-compliant food labels, there is no visibility of any stock this year and we have only four German brands," says Rahul Singh, founder and CEO, The Beer Cafe.
The FSSAI labelling regulation requires the logo/license number, ingredients, importer name, batch number, packing and expiry date of imports to be displayed. Shipments have been sent back from the ports following even minor errors in the labels. In fact, the FSSAI has been very stringent in enforcing the law since July 2014, as the companies started building up stocks for the festival season.
Singh doesn't see the FSSAI issue getting resolved soon. "Most of the large beer companies in the world have a standard label that is globally acceptable. The India orders are meagre and these large corporations don't want to change labels only for India," he points out.
source
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