Pride of cooperatives, Amul has accused global food firm Nestle of copying its trade mark A+ and has sued it demanding Rs 10 crore as damage.
Amul’s fortified butter is selling in market as Amul A+ and its other product high calcium milk is sold as Amul Calci+.Nestle has last week launched its product by converting uppercase A+ to lower case a+.
Amul has reacted to it and calls it blatant violation of trade practice. Talking to Indiancooperative.com Shri Parthi Bhatol ,Chairman of GCMMF, the Gujarat Cooperative Federation which produces various dairy products said that “we have sent legal notice to Nestle on the issue.”
Nestle may be global giant but Amul has beaten it on home turf so far as dairy products are concerned. GCMMF has captured 85 percent of butter and 70 percent of cheese market in India. GCMMF has 13 district unions and has been registering growth year after year.
During the year 2010-11, 1000 new Amul Parlours have been added, taking the total strength to 6000, thus reinforcing the wide popularity of the concept.
Federation has also done remarkably well in most of the value-added consumer packs. Amul Butter has also shown an impressive value growth of 26%. Sales of Amul Milk in pouches have grown by 34% in value terms.
GCMMF already started 30 super distributors across 8 states, covering 520 smaller towns. In the year 2011-12, there is plan to increase the number of super distributors to 150 and cover as many as 3000 small towns.