Pran-RFL, the country's leading industrial group, is coming to the market of daily commodities including edible oil, flour, pulses and salt with big investment. Through this they want to lead this sector in the consumer goods market.
The company has already come a long way in building a new industrial park at Moktarpur in Gazipur for the production of daily necessities. There are two poultry farms in Moulvibazar and Habiganj. Mobile manufacturing plant is establishing in Narsingdi. Besides, they have also taken big initiatives to expand garment, footwear and glassware factories.
Pran-RFL Group officials told that they plan to invest at least Tk. 1,700 crore in 2022 alone. It will create 20,000 new jobs.
Mr. Ahsan Khan Chowdhury, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pran-RFL Group, told, "We are investing in sectors that can meet local consumer demand as well as increase exports. We also want to support the development of the agricultural sector and job creation."
Mr. Kamruzzaman Kamal, director (marketing) of the industrial group, said that a large part of the huge market for consumer goods includes daily commodities like edible oil, flour, semolina, pulses, sugar and salt. However, Pran Group is currently working on a plan to produce all types of daily commodities except sugar.
Meanwhile, Pran-RFL is working on setting up a new industrial park called Kaliganj Agro Processing Limited (KAPL) at Muktarpur in Gazipur to produce soybean seed processing and oil refining, flour, salt, pulses, starch, feedmill and other products, company officials said. The group plans to invest around Tk. 1,500 crore this year. They are hoping that the products produced in the factory will be available in the market by the end of this year.
The total market for consumer goods in Bangladesh is estimated at USD 200 billion, or about Tk. 17 lakh crore, according to a study by light market research firm Light Castle.
However, in that study of Light Castle, all kinds of 'consumer markets' were calculated. Only the essentials were not separated there.
City, Meghna, TK, Bashundhara, S Alam, Abul Khair and several other industrial groups are currently leading the daily commodity market in the country. Of these, Citigroup alone sells products worth around Tk 25,000 crore annually.
Investment in handsets, garments and poultry:
Pran-RFL Group has been in the electric market of the country for a long time with Vision and Click brand. This time the group is also launching a mobile phone called Proton brand. To this end, the work of setting up a factory at Pran Industrial Park in Narsingdi has been completed. The factory will produce smart and feature phones as well as various types of mobile accessories including headphones, batteries and chargers.
Pran's Proton phone will compete with other brands including Samsung, Symphony, Walton, Vivo, Oppo, Realmy, Techno, iTel, Infinix, FiveStar, Nokia and others in the country's Tk. 12 thousand crore mobile phone market.
Mr. Kamruzzaman Kamal said, "Our factory has the capacity to make one lakh pieces of smartphones and one and a half lakh pieces of feature phones per month. Proton brand mobile phones will be delivered to the buyers by next March."
Although Pran-RFL is a pioneer in the agro-processing industry in the country; The group was not directly involved in the poultry farm business. But this time they are building poultry industry on 150 bighas of land in Moulvibazar and Chunarughat of Habiganj. For this, the construction of infrastructure at a cost of Tk 40 crore has also been completed. From here, the group's officials hope to supply 150 million pieces of eggs and 360 tons of chicken meat a year.
According to relevant sources, the market for poultry industry in the country has exceeded Tk. 30,000 crore. At present there are more than one lakh poultry farms. There are 206 registered parent stock farms or hatcheries. Every day about four and a half crore pieces of eggs are being produced and about three thousand tons of chicken meat is being produced daily.
Pran-RFL also plans to produce various types of underwear and polo T-shirts at an investment of Tk 50 crore at Barindra Industrial Park in Godagari, Rajshahi. Initially, 2,500 rural women will be employed there, said Kamruzzaman Kamal.
Footwear & Glassware Factory Expansion:
Pran-RFL Group officials plan to expand footwear and glassware factories even in the midst of the epidemic.
The existing shoe production capacity at the footwear factory at Narsingdi Industrial Park will be increased from 6 lakh pairs to 9 lakh at a cost of Tk 35 crore. And with an investment of Tk 55 crore in the glassware factory, the production capacity will be tripled.
At present, 2.5 lakh square feet of glass can be produced here per month, which will be 7.5 lakh square feet after the new investment.
The Pran-RFL Group started its journey through Rangpur Foundry Limited (RFL) in 1981 with the help of its founder Amjad Khan Chowdhury by constructing tubewells and agricultural auxiliary equipment for the purpose of providing pure drinking water and irrigation water to the poor. He started this business with an investment of only 5 Tk. lakh.
In 1985, he started small scale cultivation of banana, papaya, pineapple, tuberose etc. in Narsingdi in the name of processing food products. At that time he started this business by forming Agricultural Marketing Company Limited.
Since then, Pran-RFL Group has been one of the leading industrial groups in the country, producing and marketing a wide range of products including soft drinks, sauces, jellies, chanachur, chips, spices, chocolates, bakeries, frozen foods, toiletries, dairy products, housewares and electronics.
At present there are about 2,800 products in 10 categories of life. About 1 lakh 29 thousand workers are working directly in the companies of the group, which is the highest at the private level. At present about 1.5 million people are directly and indirectly dependent on the group. The group has an annual turnover of over USD 2.4 billion.
Currently, life products are being exported to five geographical regions of the world: Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. Pran has its own sales and distribution centers in New York, USA, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, Oman, Malaysia, Singapore, Somalia as well as its own offices, warehouses and other supporting infrastructure.
The group has recently set up its own factory in India to sustain the growing growth on foreign soil.
|Source: Online/TA
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