Olympic Industries buys more land for factory expansion

Olympic Industries, the maker of popular Energy Plus biscuit, is setto purchase additional 1.75 decimals land adjacent to its factory in Lolati, Narayanganj for about Tk 8.2 lakh, it said on Thursday.

This comes after the company last month bought 16 decimals land for Tk 60 lakh to go with the 513.84 decimals it had bought earlier in August.

“We aim to grow within the existing three campuses or facilities that we currently operate and the additional land will allow us to thoughtfully align and possibly even realign our production lines and capacities to optimise output as well as operational and logistical efficiencies,” the company said in its annual report for the 2019-20 financial year. 

The disclosure comes after the company last month announced a fresh investment plan of Tk 42 crore to expand its production capacity and introduce more premium variety cracker and hard dough biscuits.

In October, the company announced bringing in new machinery, equipment and spares from China at an estimated cost of $579,000.

“Since the demand for our products is increasing day by day, we are planning on expanding our production lines and introducing more food products,” Mubarak Ali, managing director of Olympic Industries, earlier told Dhaka Tribune.

Olympic Industries, which benefitted from consumers’ appetite for munching on biscuits while stuck at home, has turned in back-to-back profitable quarters at a time when most are floundering. 

Between July and September, the company logged in profit of Tk 57 crore, up 2.2 per cent from a year earlier.

In the preceding three months, when the country was in the thick of a general shutdown, Olympic, whose biscuits, confectionery and bakery products are hugely popular among middle-income households because of affordable price points, posted a profit of Tk 48 crore against Tk 47.7 crore a year earlier.

Its sales between April and September stood at Tk 859.3 crore, up 19.7 per cent from a year earlier.

Bangladesh’s leading biscuit manufacturer’s performance is in line with its global counterparts.

For instance, over in India, Britannia, the maker of Good Day biscuits, and Parle, the name behind the Parle-G brand biscuit, saw staggering sales between April and September.

Ali credited the rise in demand for its biscuits amid the pandemic to the packaged form in which they are sold.

They are not sold loosely, so they are better placed to capitalise on the shift in consumption from out-of-home to in-home.

“We work very closely with retailers of all sizes, ranging from tea stalls to general stores to large supermarkets. We have invested in 100,000+ co-branded store signage to prominently affirm the availability of our products.”

Subsequently, Olympic, whose popular brands include Energy Plus, Tip, Nutty, First Choice and Hilux, logged in profit of Tk 202.5 crore in its 2019-20 financial year, up 8.2 per cent year-on-year. Olympic’s financial year runs from July to June.

The company announced a 52 per cent cash dividend for its 2019-20 financial year, its highest yet.

But Thursday’s announcement failed to excite investors: shares of Olympic Industries closed at Tk 195.3, down 5.4 per cent from the previous day.