With its Hudson brand, Dalmia Continental focuses on canola oil

After building the olive oil category for nearly a decade, Dalmia Continental intends focusing on the canola oil category with its brand- Hudson, with an investment of Rs 100 crore.

The Delhi-based Marketing and Distribution Company recently sold off its decade old Leonardo olive oil brand to Cargill India.

Unlike olive oil, canola oil is relatively cheaper edible oil (₹200 for a litre) and a much smaller category at less than ₹100 crore with volumes at 4,000 tonnes.

Canola oil is developed from different varieties of rapeseed and belongs to the

Brassica family. Most of canola oil is imported from Canada, the largest producers and consumer of the category. “We will now invest behind the canola oil category with the money we got from selling Leonardo mostly and become more aggressive in terms of prices and schemes for our Hudson brand. There will be new above-the-line campaigns to promote the category,’’ said VN Dalmia, Chairman, Dalmia Continental. The company recently sold its Leonardo brand for almost ₹70 crore to Cargill India.

Dalmia Continental launched Hudson Canola Oil in 2008 with the intention of providing consumers with affordable edible oil compared to olive oil. “In 2008, we started selling canola oil in a small way. Hudson Canola oil has almost equal distribution in modern trade like Leonardo olive oil today, but for some reason there is no awareness about the category as consumers tend to confuse it with corn oil,’’ added Dalmia. The company sources its canola oil from Canada based suppliers like Richardson Oil Seeds.

Jivo Canola oil is the market leader followed by Hudson in India.

Awareness In the past, the Canola Council of Canada has tried to create awareness of canola oil in the country as it viewed India as a priority market due to the high consumption of vegetable oil. It promoted canola oil as being ‘good for everybody’ given the incidence of heart disease and diabetes.

According to commodity analysts, India imports nearly 10 million tonnes of edible oil, of which almost 8 million is palm oil. Canola Oil imports are almost negligible at nearly 70,000 tonnes.