Volume growth to be in focus as costs cool: Tata Consumer CEO

Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) expects consumer goods companies to start focusing on volume growth in the coming year as commodity costs cool, MD and CEO Sunil D'Souza said, as price-led growth of the recent past takes the back seat.

- Suneera Tandon

"In the food and beverages space, due to benign pricing and with costs not going up, now it's a question of volume growth coming back," D'Souza said in an interview. "You'll find a lot of players shifting focus from value growth to volume growth because the cost side, rather than the pricing side, is taking care of margins. For us, foods (in India) still delivered 5% volume growth in the December quarter. Our long-term guidance is within this range." In the past two years, companies struggling with high food inflation and rising commodity costs had raised prices or reduced grammage to protect margins, slowing growth of mass-market products.

D'Souza's comments align with what makers of other packaged food companies have been reporting. Earlier this week, Nestlé India's top boss Suresh Narayanan said benign food inflation will help consumers spend more on packaged essentials.