The investment will fund new capacity and supply chain expansion, enabling Lotte to extend Havmor ice cream’s reach into Bengaluru and Chennai
New Delhi: South Korean multinational Lotte will expand its products beyond ice cream and choco pie as it plans to enter the snack segment riding on the popularity of K-food and K-pop in India, said a top company official on Thursday.
Lotte, which opened an ice cream manufacturing facility in Pune for its Havmor business, has plans to launch ‘Pepero’, its famous chocolate-coated biscuit stick, said Lotte Wellfood CEO Paul Yi.
“It is the number one branded confectionery snack in Korea, and we will be launching and introducing that to the Indian consumers in July of this year, producing it for the first time outside of Korea in our Haryana plant,” he said.
Lotte currently produces the snack cake ‘choco pie’ in India. Lotte Confectionery, in 2017 acquired Havmor Ice Cream.
When asked whether Lotte Wellfood would introduce new products and enter into new segments, Yi said: “We will explore other categories, such as snacks.”
Lotte Wellfood Co, formerly known as Lotte Confectionery, is a South Korean confectionery multinational headquartered in Seoul, South Korea having eight foreign subsidiaries and production factories at 21 locations.
It has invested Rs 500 crore at its new Pune plant for Havmor ice cream, which has an annual production capacity of 50 million litres and is expandable up to 100 million litres in subsequent years. It is designed to cater to the surging demand for ice cream, particularly during the intense summer season in the country.
According to Yi, India’s ice cream market is small in comparison to other countries, but it has “tremendous opportunity” as it scales up.
On being asked about the next phase of investment in India, Yi said: “We have a fundamental, foundational three to five-year roadmap, and that three to five-year roadmap currently calls for an additional $300 million of capacity and supply chain expansion endeavours.”
“Now, as we revisit those plans, it will evolve, and my guess is it will only go up,” he added.
This new plant will also help Lotte in expanding the reach of Havmor ice cream and to “go down as far south as Bengaluru and Chennai”. Havmor is expanding beyond Gujarat and already has a presence in many parts of the country, Yi added.
Besides, Lotte is also looking for export potential from this plant, catering to neighbouring regions.
“We have plans to export to the Middle East and certainly Africa is a possibility,” he said.
However, he also added though export from India is a part of Lotte Wellfood, the focus would be the Indian market, which has huge potential.
Currently, Havmor’s revenues are about $200 million and has about 5 per cent share of India’s branded ice cream market.
In countries like China, the ice cream market size is $23 billion, expects it to evolve in the coming years and has “tremendous opportunity”.
“As the Indian consumer base expands and evolves, it will certainly go towards the China side. So it will be good for the entire category. But certainly, as we lead innovation and introduction and connection to the Indian consumers with innovation… we feel like we have a tremendous opportunity,” he said.
In India, Lotte Wellfood had in August 2024 announced the merger of its businesses — Lotte India and Havmor Ice Cream — into one entity.
Asked about the development, Paul said: “We are on schedule to complete, hopefully by the end of the first quarter, the first quarter of this year, which is March.”
