Maintaining Bakery Business in Pandemic

Bakery industry is the largest segment of the food processing sector in India. There are over 2,000 bakeries in the organized and semi organized subdivision of the industry producing about 1.3 million tones of the bakery products and another 1,000,000 small scale bakeries producing 1.7 million tones. COVID 19 affected the working of this industry, also, adversely. Though bakery products were not as badly affected as food items in the F&B sector, the industry has to adopt measures to ensure that its production and distribution attain high standards of hygiene in order to retain its status in the food processing industry. Ashok Malkani takes a look at how the industry can maintain hygiene in the production line-up (including personal hygiene), distribution and retail segments.

- Ashok Malkani

The bakery industry, one of the largest food processing segments worth about $ 6.70 billion in 2020 is, according to EMR (Expert Market Research), estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.5% between 2021 and 2026 to reach a value of $ 12.39 billion by 2026. The Indian bakery market is being driven by the increasing population and advanced technology.

There can, however, be no doubt that if the industry wants to keep its pace of growth; it will need to undergo various changes, due to the pandemic. When done right, without compromising on quality or quantity, the bakery business is easy to scale from your first location or home-setup to multiple outlets.

According to a research by Mintel, almost three out of four Indians have cited healthy eating as a higher priority, due to the pandemic. Thus the bakery industry would have to lay stress on their products being healthy. The bakery industry, to continue with its growth graph, has to introduce products which consist of multi-grains, nuts and other healthy ingredients.

To satisfy the consumer demand for products which are nutritious, healthy, fresh with more complex flavour profiles, the companies are expected to use lesser known grains like millet and ragi. The trend is, for the baking companies, to use flour of these grains for their baked products.

The consumption pattern of bread, according to Mintel, is expected to see a major shift from the white breads towards more multigrain, wholegrain, specialty, ethnic and seeded breads. This is mainly due to consumers’ desire for nutritious and healthier products due to the pandemic. Several companies have already started production of multigrain and whole wheat breads, which are finding an increasing preference among the consumers.