The Takawe, Pune, unit of Tetra Pak India will serve as the global sourcing centre for tetra fino, the latest of liquid packaging solution from Tetra Pak.

Factory Manager Jean Louis Joner, Tetra Pak India, says this would happen despite greater demand for tetra fino from other countries, particularly China, Egypt and Ecuador.

"The tetra fino technology is a new technology. The know-how and experience needs to be tracked before we spread its production worldwide," said Joner, reiterating that India will continue to be the only global centre for another two years. A plant in China is likely after that, followed by other countries, he said.

About 90 per cent of the present production is exported outside India, especially to China, with Egypt and Ecuador fast catching up. "The number of factories supplying filling machines (using tetra fino as the packaging material) coming up in these countries has been more than the forecast," says Joner, which will see stepped up of production at the Takawe plant.

The company expects to produce nearly 400 million tetra fino packages during calendar 2000, out of the total 700 million projected this year.

Tetra fino is a flexible aseptic packaging for liquid products that has the same multi-layering of paper, aluminium foil and polymer as in tetra brik cartons, but is cheaper as a result of using thinner paper and no thick board.

Besides making the material for tetra fino, Tetra Pak India supplies material for tetra packaging including tetra brik cartons, packaging machines, and food processing systems.

Tetra Pak India began full-fledged operations in India in 1996 with the Takawe unit, with an investment of Rs 80 crore. Prior to this, the company had a 20 per cent share in Hindusthan Packaging Company Ltd., located at Itola near Baroda, since the 1980s, which it upped to 100 per cent in mid-1999 with an investment of Rs 60 crore.

The Itola plant continues to provide slower filling machines and materials for the TB10 tetra briks, while the Takawe plant caters to the high speed TB Aseptic tetra briks.

The Takawe unit has a capacity to produce 1.2 billion packages annually, which can be upped to two billion packages with the addition of another sealing machine. The Itola plant has a capacity for 800 million packages. However, the company could use only 200 million-package capacity from the Takawe plant and 300 million from the Itola plant during 1999, which is expected to reach 700 million this calendar year from the Takawe plant, and 300 from the Itola plant.

The company, besides increasing thrust to open up the Indian market, will focus on exports. "One way to increase capacity utilisation is to increase exports," said Joner. The company also acquired the Tetra Pak Processing Systems from Alfa Laval (India) Ltd., which has now merged into Tetra Pak India operations. Both Alfa Laval and Tetra Pak are Tetra Laval companies, but the 12 billion dollar Tetra Laval group is in the process of selling off Alfa Laval, globally.