P&G to set up $100m plant in Pakistan: business 24-7

By

Shashank Shekhar on Thursday, June 25, 2009

Fast-moving customer goods giant Procter and Gamble (P&G) will set up a $100 million (Dh367m) manufacturing plant in Pakistan by mid-2010, said Al Karim Al Rajwani, the company's Vice-President for Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan, yesterday.

The firm is also looking to set up a manufacturing plant at its Jebel Ali facility.

The Pakistani plant would produce detergents and other laundry products. Al Rajwani said the company has begun handling its operations in Pakistan, Middle East and North Africa from its Jebel Ali based office.

"We are continuously looking for opportunities and we want to use the potential of Jebel Ali," he said.

Besides a P&G office, Jebel Ali has warehouses from where the company re-exports its products. Al Rajwani said the company that has been registering a five to seven per cent growth for the past several years registered a one per cent growth in the first quarter of this year over the last quarter in 2008 as global economic downturn impeded its growth.

The P&G vice-president said the company's expenditure on promotions has remained intact during the crisis and it continues to hire staff. "We had 200 people in our Dubai office the last year. We have about 350 of them now," he said.

The company has focused on introducing a "tier system" of pricing the products to tackle a stubborn customer looking to spend less during the global financial crisis. "We are not crisis-proof but crisis-resistant. There is a two-pronged strategy that we have adopted to sail through the crisis. One is to provide additional value in the same product. The other is to provide cheaper options to the customer," Al Rajwani said.

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