Varun Beverages, part of India’s RJ Corp. food and drinks group, has entered an agreement with PepsiCo to manufacture and distribute snacks in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Based in Gurgaon in the state of Haryana, Varun Beverages plans to invest around $7 million in two facilities to produce PepsiCo’s Simba Munchiez brand of snacks.
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The target is for the Zimbabwe facility to become operational on or before the 1 October next year and the Zambia plant to come on stream around the 1 April 2026, according to a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Varun Beverages, which has been a franchisee for PepsiCo’s soft drinks brands such as Mountain Dew, Miranda and 7-Up since the 1990s, said each site will have the capacity to produce about 5,000 metric tonnes of snacks annually for the respective markets in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The production of Simba Munchiez snacks will be conducted through the company’s individual subsidiaries – Varun Foods in Zimbabwe and Varun Beverages in Zambia.
Quoting industry data, Varun Beverages said the snacks market in Zimbabwe is estimated at circa $177m a year and $156m in Zambia.
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By GlobalDataIn February, the company said it also entered an agreement with PepsiCo to manufacture the US food and drink giant’s Cheetos snack brand in Morocco. Production is due to kick in around the 1 May next year.
Varun Beverages estimates the snacks market in Morocco is worth around $500m annually.
As well as Morocco, Zimbabwe and Zambia, Varun Beverages is also a PepsiCo soft drinks franchisee in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Closer to home, the company supplies 27 Indian states.
In 2022, Varun Beverages started production of the PepsiCo Kurkure snacks brand at a plant in Kosi, Uttar Pradesh. The same year it began distribution of the Lays and Doritos lines in Morocco.
Parent company RJ Corp. also holds the franchises in India for the foodservice outlets KFC, Costa coffee and Pizza Hut, amongst others. Led by chairman Ravi Jaipuria, the business generates annual revenue of around $2bn.
