Mondelez launches new Phl products

MANILA, Philippines - Snack food manufacturer Mondelez Philippines Inc. (MPI) has launched new products unique to the Filipino market to support higher sales.

In a briefing, MPI country head Ashish Pisharodi said the company is introducing new products to cater to the Filipino market’s preference as to better serve customers.

“While we are a global company, we try to think local,” he said.

Among the new products launched to cater to the Filipino market is the Oreo Coconut Delight cookies which are made from coconuts sourced from the Philippines but are manufactured in Indonesia.

Aside from Oreo Coconut Delight, MPI is also offering new flavors of powdered beverage Tang such as calamansi, dalandan and honey lemon, exclusively for the Philippine market.

Pisharodi said the new offerings, which were just made available to the market this month, are expected to help drive higher sales for the company.

He declined to give a sales target, but said that the company expects faster growth in younger business categories such as biscuits and chocolates, than in mature categories like cheese and powdered beverage.

This, as MPI’s brands in the cheese and powdered beverage categories already hold the top spot in the market.

“Essentially, the mature categories for us are powdered beverage and cheese. We are already leading,” Pisharodi said citing that Eden is the number one cheese brand here, while Tang is the biggest powdered beverage brand.

“For biscuits, we set significantly higher targets (than for mature categories) as well as chocolate,” he added.

MPI’s products such as Eden Cheese, Cheez Whiz, Kraft Cheddar, Miracle Whip, Eden Mayo and Eden Sandwich Spread are manufactured at the firm’s plant in Paranaque City, while the other products are imported.

Pisharodi said that while there are no plans at the moment to locally manufacture other brands or products, the company is interested in opportunities to use raw materials from here.

“It is not practical or not efficient to have a factory for every brand in every country, and not practical to buy raw materials from every country. We can create more value through synergy in sourcing…but we look out for these opportunities whenever possible,” he said.

Established in 1963, MPI, which was formerly known as Kraft Foods Philippines changed its name in 2013 due to a global split of the entire Kraft Foods company.

MPI is part of global snacks firm Mondelez International which is also behind the brands Tiger Energy Biscuits, Chips Ahoy!, Toblerone, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Halls.