Karuturi sees 700 million roses blooming in 2 years

Bangalore-based Karuturi Global, among the world’s largest sellers of cut roses, plans to produce nearly 70 crore of them annually, or about 19 lakh a day, in two years.

The current production is 15.6 lakh roses a day.

“Globally, roses account for 40% of the floriculture industry, which is growing at 10—15%,” said Manoj Agarwal, chief executive of the company’s Indian operations.

Floriculture contributed around 95% to Karuturi’s topline of Rs634 crore last fiscal.

Rose is the only flower it produces, a bulk of it in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The company exports its entire produce from Kenya, about 90% of the harvest from Ethiopia and half of its production from India, according to its website.

The biggest market for the flower is Europe, said Agarwal.

He added that the flower has a shelf life of 14 days, thanks to cold chains.

“It takes about 3-4 days to transport it from the field to the shelf.”

On Karuturi’s other businesses, Agarwal said the company will double its food processing capacity to 20,000 tonne by March 2013.

Karuturi processes vegetables like gherkin, tomato and jalapeno. The company has acquired 1,500 acre at Tumkur in Karnataka where it’ll both grow the vegetables and process them. Karuturi presently sources vegetables through contract farming.

In the next couple of years, most of the company’s planned capital expenditure of $200 million, or Rs900 crore, will be in agriculture.

Karuturi has signed an agreement with the Ethiopian government to lease 3 lakh hectare (7.4 lakh acre).

“We have already got possession of 1.1 lakh hectare and we plan to grow maize, corn, cotton and sugarcane and produce palm oil,” said Agarwal.

The company is currently in the trial phase of production.
Most of the produce will be sold to governments for their food programmes or at commodity exchanges.

For the fiscal ended March, Karuturi’s revenue and profit after tax were up 19% and 18% at Rs634 crore and Rs143 crore, respectively.