THE success of Fry Group Foods, the maker of vegetarian products, is continuing.
The family-owned business, opened almost two decades ago, has launched its products in India, probably the world's largest vegetarian market.
Its soya-based vegetarian products have been selling from Nature's Basket chain stores situated all over India for the past year. The first year's take up sales have exceeded R1.5 million.
The firm's export manager, Shaun Richardson, said yesterday that its products offered Indian buyers a vegetarian choice that was high in protein.
"They have a lot of vegetarian people in India for religious reasons. Others don't eat meat for certain days in a week and others don't eat meat at all. More recently, there are more people eating vegetables only for lifestyle and health reasons," said Richardson.
"Their vegetarian products in India don't have lots of protein and that is another gap we identified in the market because our products are high in protein, you don't have to eat meat at all."
The Durban-based firm has one manufacturing plant.
It was founded by Wally and Debbie Fry, who first made the food from their home kitchen. It produces thousands of soya-based vegetarian products annually with between 1 000 and 1 200 tons being exported.
Other export markets are the UK, Australia, Dubai, New Zealand, the US, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Ghana and Zimbabwe. Richardson said the company was not planning to enter other new markets because it wanted to concentrate on growing those that it had already penetrated.
"We are looking to build one plant outside South Africa to service the international market. Maybe it will be in India or Australia," he said.
The product range bears a close resemblance to meat in terms of taste, appearance, texture and nutrition. It includes vegetarian chunky strips, vegetarian chicken-style strips, vegetarian mince, vegetarian traditional sausages, hot dogs and polony. The company's products do not contain any egg or dairy products.
According to Richardson the biggest challenge has been to convince people that the firm's foods do not contain meat, because they look and taste like the real McCoy.
The products are sold by four major retailers in the country. Fry Group would like to convince more people to become vegetarians in South Africa. He estimated that among the 49 million-strong population only 2 million were dedicated vegetarians.