Pandemic a positive impact on FMCG business: Dr. Rohantha Athukorala

Dr. Rohantha Athukorala at the National Packaging Conference at BMICH

The Sri Lanka Institute of Packaging staged the Annual Packaging Congress 2021 at BMICH on 12 January, attracting the best names in business like Dilhan Fernando of Dilmah, global packaging experts like Aslihan Arikan and Dr. Dairio Arikan, K. Ravindran of Print Care, Mario De Alwis of MAS and Dr. Siddhika Senaratne of SLSI to name a few.

Dr. Rohantha Athukorala, the CEO for Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan for the Southern Asian Artificial Intelligence company Clootrack shared some cutting-edge data where a recent study done by the global research agency Kantar reveals that FMCG products consumption in Sri Lanka which was at a downward trend in the last three years has taken a totally a new direction during the pandemic times. 

Quarter 2, 2020 saw a spike of 24% on volume and then plateaued to a 17% volume increase in Q3 and Q4. The total volume had increased to Rs. 310 billion with FMCG growing by 14%, F&B at +15%, Personal Care +12% and Home Care by +11%. A point to note is that all segments other than the last have been registering a negative growth of -3% which is the direction change that has happened. This could be due to the household spending more time at home and given that other forms of household expenditure are not taking place like entertainment and leisure due to the pandemic the consumption of FMCG has gone up, said Dr. Athukorala. 

The question right now is how can this behaviour be sustained and how does one forecast for the next year which will have an impact on the packaging industry too, he voiced.

If one does a deep dive the products that are associated with COVID have seen an exponential growth, said Athukorala. To give a better idea the speaker took the examples of hand wash that has increased by +186% as per the data revealed by Kantar Sri Lanka whilst this is further extended to the surface cleaners and toilet cleaners which are in the spectrum of germ protection given the pandemic at play. 

The question now is how the packaging industry would innovate and add value to this proposition from a packaging point of view. The companies that are aggressive will take leadership in categories and we see the same in the Sri Lankan packaging industry too, commented Dr. Athukorala who is a former Chairman of the Sri Lankan Export Development Board and a Commissioner General for Sri Lanka at World Expo in Milan. 

The organisations passionate to change with an entrepreneurial spirit are getting traction in the market. This is a trend seen not only in Sri Lanka but globally. A classic example is Tesla that was in serious trouble a few years back is with over 200 billion dollars in value. This is the power of innovation and risk orientation, he said.