Tough and Sweet

With his deceptively calm demeanour, S. Suresh is transforming sugar and sweetener major EID Parry into a food, fuels and nutrition company 

- Rahul Oberoi

WHAT DOES IT take to run one of the oldest businesses in the Indian subcontinent? Ask S. Suresh, MD of 235-year-old sugar and nutraceuticals manufacturer EID Parry (India), and he says staying calm in a crisis, maintaining an exercise regimen and keeping your eyes peeled for any change in the market does the trick. His mantra is corroborated by the fact that since he took over as MD in August 2017, the company’s consolidated top- and bottom lines have grown by 10 and nearly 12 per cent, respectively, every year till FY22. So, what has helped him to achieve such double-digit growth in recent years?

Suresh cites the example of shutting down underutilised plants in Tamil Nadu and shifting the assets of another to a factory in Karnataka, to explain that consolidating the company’s capacities and operations has helped them. He also talks about how he is focussed on transforming the sugar and sweetener major into a food, fuels, and nutrition company over the next five years. “This strategy, coupled with the organic growth of cane through connections with farmers, has helped us increase cane volumes from 3.7 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), to more than 5 million mtpa over the past five years,” he says, adding that with higher recovery of sugar, the profitability of a company in this industry becomes better.