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RPG group, Hong Kong's Dairy Farm forge tie-up

RPG Enterprises and the Hong Kong-based Dairy Farm International Holdings Limited announced in Calcutta today establishment of a joint venture for retailing a whole range of food items in india.

The joint venture company,with a 49 per cent equity stake of Dairy Farm, will now takeover and operate Foodworld Supermarkets in India that came into being in 1995 through a technical assistance agreement between Dairy Farm and Spencer and Company Limited, an RPG company.

Ronald J Floto, Dairy Farm's chief executive, said that his company would invest an inital $ 6 million to take part in the total Rs 500 million equity base.

Dairy Farm, which runs one of the largest food and drug stores retailing chain in the Asia-Pacific region, operates nearly 2,000 outlets with an annual sales of $ 6.6 billion.

RPG group vice-chairman Sanjiv Goenka said the joint venture would now acquire the 29 Foodworld Supermarkets, currently being operated by Spencer in Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad at a cost of Rs 250 million. It had plans to take the total number of stores to 50 by the next year in these three cities and in Pune where the next Foodworld store would be inaugurated in September 1999.

About 3,000 items, to be retailed from these outlets, were broadly classified under staples, perishables, processed foods, beverages, cleaning aids, health and beauty, hardware and general merchandise.

Goenka said the company had an ambitious plan of going nationwide in near future, envisaging setting up of 50 more outlets in the northern and eastern regions by the end of 2001.

With this alliance, he said, Foodworld would build on its status as a pioneer in organised retailing in India and would contine to set new standards of customer service and supply chain innovation in areas of food and fast-moving consumer goods retailing, he said.

The existing 29 Foodworld Supermarkets-- 11 in Madras, 10 in Bangalore and eight in Hyderabad-- had registered a monthly turnover of more than Rs 110 million in July, Goenka said.

UNI

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