Globally, the frozen food industry is expanding rapidly due to a confluence of factors like increasing tourism and the subsequent rise of QSRs, growing nuclear families, the rise of dual-income households, increasing job pressures, and the dynamic eating habits of modern youth. The convenience and ease of eating food nurtured by ready-to-eat/cook products have positively compelled people to stick to frozen food products worldwide. Within this segment, India is emerging as the key supplier, meeting global demands for frozen food across Southeast Asia, North America, and the Middle East.
Despite significant growth opportunities, the industry faces challenges posed by price volatility, maintenance of cold chains, visibility, and irregular availability. Additionally, substandard products in the market are another challenge that annihilates the consumer’s edible experience. To address such challenges, Pal Frozen Foods, a Haldwani-based frozen foods company, proactively participates in food exhibitions to enhance brand awareness and demonstrate the freshness, superior quality, texture, and taste of its products, which sets the company as a consumer-committed organization.
Puneet Khanna, CEO
Range of Products
Founded in 2013, Pal Frozen Foods specializes in planning, processing, and producing high-quality frozen fruits and vegetables under its brand name ‘Pal Fresh’. Leveraging its state-of-the-art frozen food plant in Haldwani, Uttarakhand and homegrown supplies of fresh raw materials, the company delivers best-in-class frozen products to consumers and partners worldwide.
"Our company operates on advanced IQF technology, offering an efficient way to produce high-quality frozen foods while preserving their freshness, texture, flavor, and nutritional value, with utmost care. Alongside sustainable packaging, we incorporate great visuals, unique logos, and graphics on the packages, which attract customers immensely. Our frozen food products are carefully packed in high-quality seals so that they remain protected from the outside environment, and hence the products are delivered safely through our cold chain logistics support to the consumer," shares Prateek Pal, Director.
The company provides a wide range of frozen products including green peas, cauliflower, sweet corn, beans, strawberries, peaches, mixed vegetables, mango cubes, plums, tomato, karela, broccoli, onion, potatoes, spinach, okra, and carrots. Furthermore, the company has launched a range of frozen snacks under the brand name ‘Frozzo’ which comprises aloo tikki, veg patty, cheese corn nuggets, and more. The entire range of Pal Frozen Foods products is present across cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kochi, Lucknow, Dehradun, Haldwani, Kolkata, Angul, Guwahati, and more.
Advancing with Technology
Over the past decade, the company has focused extensively on advancing its technological framework. The company’s manufacturing infrastructure has innovative equipment and machineries including, Washing, Peeling, Cutting, Blanching, Individual Quick Freezing and Packaging, built to satisfy its processing and production needs.
"We have continually improved our technology and capacity over the last 10 years. Our manufacturing facilities are state-of-the-art and can meet high-quality output at required production volumes.
We have access to a variety of advanced machinery and tools capable of handling cutting-edge technologies. This allows us to produce top-quality frozen food," adds Kanha Kumar Sharma, Plant Head.
In addition to focusing on its line of frozen food products and optimizing processes that help in increasing efficiency and product quality, the company also focuses on contract farming processes. Contract farming, which plays a pivotal role in combating global warming by preserving agricultural land, is highly promoted by the firm, motivating farmers to enhance crop yield and quality, improve harvesting techniques, and adopt climate-friendly practices.
“We grow our own vegetables by contract farming; ensuring quality, dependable, and standardized harvest as a quality input in the required volume. Through contract farming, efficient resource utilization, including water, fertilizers, and more, is promoted. By collaborating with farmers, Pal Frozen Foods aims to address challenges and scale up climate-friendly practices across agricultural supply chains. Additionally, providing education and training programs for farmers to adopt climate-smart practices further strengthens these efforts,” further shares Deepak Farswan, GM Sales & Operations.
For quality assurance, the company takes multiple steps to ensure high-quality products from farming the right crops, seeds, and manures, to implementing multi-step inspections to check the product quality throughout the manufacturing process. The company’s control over agricultural processes adds to its strategic advantage and competitive edge from the get-go, as the firm has unwavering confidence in the quality of its raw materials.
Deepak Farswan, GM Sales & Operations
The company’s manufacturing processes feature a robust quality assurance system in place, which enables it to effortlessly control every step of the processing phase, guaranteeing high quality at every level. Moreover, the company closely collaborates with clients before starting new consignments to ensure its products meet the precise requirements they demand, further enhancing market trust.
Through continuous research and development initiatives aimed at regularly improving the frozen product range, introducing new products, identifying market dynamics and demands, and staying abreast of the ever-evolving market trends and needs, the company ensures that it stays at the forefront.
“Healthy eating habits lead to healthy living; this is a proven fact. That is the reason why each and every person wants to spend their money on food items that are highly nutritive and safe to consume. Initiated with an objective to serve high-quality food products in frozen form to the people, Pal Frozen Foods, is now well-equipped with modern cold storage and dexterous staff, and effectively serving fresh, tasty, and nutritious palatable frozen food products to the customers,” adds Puneet Khanna, CEO.
Given the tremendous promise the industry is destined to show for the next five years, we have various plans to stay ahead of our competitors in the frozen food industry by focusing on maintaining the quality of our products
Journey & Future Roadmap
SM Pal Group, established in 1982, leads its extension, Pal Frozen Foods, by leveraging its legacy of excellence in the market. Under its umbrella of exponential growth and development, Pal Frozen Foods enjoys many perks that the group's prominence in the market offers. The group has a strong foothold across cities of India like Haldwani, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Kolhapur, Bangalore, Dehradun, Kolkata, Kochi, Mumbai, and more, and is one of the leading exporters across nations like Taiwan, Nepal, China, Mauritius, with a substantial export to the countries of the Middle East and North America.
Over the years, Pal Frozen Foods has expanded its business, built its distribution chain, and enhanced its client associations, which have allowed it to navigate through a highly satisfactory journey, a big part of which has been its capability to continually boost its infrastructure. As it looks into the future, the company aims to continually increase its prominence with continuous investment in its production segment, storage, state-of-the-art, and distribution network, which are pivotal to thriving in this competitive industry.
Aligning its growth and development goals with the scope of expansion that the industry offers, Pal Frozen Foods has devised multifaceted plans that will support its growth. Over the next five years, the company aims to double its production capabilities to meet the increasing market demands for frozen foods. Moreover, the company is targeting growth of over five percent per season, which will put it in a sturdy position to achieve all its expansion plans.
“Given the tremendous promise the industry is destined to show for the next five years, we have various plans to stay ahead of our competitors in the frozen food industry by focusing on maintaining the quality of our products. To achieve this, we will adopt multiple strategies like product diversification and exceptionally nurturing dedicated customer services available round the clock. Moreover, we also have exclusive plans to make the consumers more aware of frozen foods and the relevance of these products,” lastly adds Suresh Pal, Chairman.
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