Saqib Butt, CEO at PK Meat & Food Company Pvt. Ltd., shares his insights into the market with Daily NewsPK in an interview highlighting challenges and opportunities in the frozen food industry.
While discussing how he ventured into the industry, Butt said that, “Our family business is and was fresh meat export from Pakistan, and PK is the first ever Company in Pakistan to export any fresh meat from Pakistan, and also the largest individual exporter. Hence, the further food division was an extension to PK’s Existing fresh food factories.”
He further commented on the potential of the frozen food industry by stating, “The market of frozen value added food products is ever growing in Pakistan although the market is not very big, as frozen food doesn’t fall under the FMCG and is more of a luxury product for a specific niche. We have a prominent market leader in the market as well, PK’s USP is we are the only company to have products in chicken, mutton and beef all three under one banner.”
Butt also highlighted that the biggest challenge for the country is the energy crisis (shortage), which presents a challenge for food brands to penetrate in general trading on such products, he added, “Energy crises does not allow fragile products like these to be sold in every shop of the country. Opportunity can be the rising trend of using hygienic food products made in factories having international standards and the overall preference of these products by the educated customers. Another challenge is the imposition of GST of 17% on our products which has drastically increased the final price for the end consumers.”
Discussing his plans for the second half of 2022 with Daily NewsPK, Butt said that, “We have ready to eat products which can be just heated and served, and a range of ready to cook products which are partially cooked. We are introducing in August 2022 a new range of chicken products which would be one of a kind for Pakistani market, these are our “HomeStyle Crispy” Chicken Products, just like KFC’s Crispy chicken but we plan to give it to the customers in a frozen form and almost 40% lower price than KFC”.
He further ventured to discuss the growing e-Commerce market in Pakistan and how pandemic drastically changed buying patterns of consumers, “During the pandemic, we saw for the first time the trend of grocery shopping over e-Commerce. This was a major shift and now e-Commerce is a major sales channel for our industry. Buying patterns have changed and people are preferring the e-Commerce channel over the traditional supermarkets.”
He also added, “The e-Commerce is emerging to be the main sales channel, and operations wise many advanced machinery and equipment has been imported in the last 02 years, as the food industry was one of the few industries in the world which experienced growth even during the pandemic.”
Finally, Butt commenting on how keen they are in supporting the environment and what their plan are for the future said, “Currently, the frozen food market of Pakistan is roughly around 2000 MT / Month and the estimated sales number of such is around 0.7 to 0.8 Billion PKR. In the coming 05 years I see a few new players entering the market, I also see the market growing by a minimum of 5% and many opportunities to make a good number are in sight. The growing trend for environment friendliness is that we are keen towards finding better solutions and replacing paper. For example, in one of our products we have replaced plastic with a biodegradable material which appears to be plastic but is not plastic. However, at present we use cardboard packaging, and some of our products are packed in plastic but we are aiming to be more environmentally friendly in the near future.”
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