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Uni-Charm to boost sales with new products
PT Uni-Charm Indonesia, the local arm of Tokyo-based diaper and feminine-care firm Unicharm, is expecting to boost sales with the launch of several new products as the company targets the countryâs growing consumer class, an executive said
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T Uni-Charm Indonesia, the local arm of Tokyo-based diaper and feminine-care firm Unicharm, is expecting to boost sales with the launch of several new products as the company targets the country's growing consumer class, an executive said.
Uni-Charm Indonesia president director Masaaki Takahashi said on Friday that the new products would be launched in October and November this year.
'We are fairly certain of increasing our contribution to our parent company's global revenue to between 11 and 12 percent in the near future,' he said, without elaborating on how much the new products would contribute to overall sales and revenue.
Indonesian sales amounted to Rp 6.5 trillion (US$543.02 million) last year, and as of March they make up 10 percent of Uni-Charm's global sales, the largest amount in Southeast Asia.
Japan and China have become the major revenue boosters with total contributions of 43 and 15 percent, respectively.
Uni-Charm Indonesia marketing manager Michiru Nakagawa said that the new products would access a new market for the company and help grow its market share in the future.
There is to be a new product for each of Uni-Charm Indonesia's product categories, namely baby diapers, feminine hygiene and adult diapers.
Uni-Charm Indonesia is currently the top player in each of its product categories, with baby diaper MamyPoko, Charm female sanitary napkin and Lifree adult diaper having 65.6 percent, 40.1 percent and 33 percent market share, respectively, according to the firm's internal data.
'We want to replicate the success that we have achieved from launching new products in the past. In baby diapers, for example, we grew by 591 percent in the period of 2008 to 2013, surpassing the country's baby diaper market growth of 440 percent over the same period,' he said.
This year, Uni-Charm Indonesia would target members of the country's growing consumer class with monthly household expenditures of between Rp 2.5 and Rp 6 million, after successfully dominating the baby diaper market for both the lower- and upper-middle classes through its MamyPoko brand, he told reporters.
Uni-Charm Indonesia was upbeat that the sales of the soon-to-be-launched new baby diaper product, dubbed MamyPoko Pants Extra Dry, would grow significantly, as the targeted class would also surge, Nakagawa said.
'It is forecast that the targeted consumer class will make up 50.8 percent of the country's total population by 2016, from only 33.5 percent in 2011,' Nakagawa said.
Uni-Charm Indonesia's senior brand manager for baby and feminine products, Masaki Ishibashi, said that his firm would also launch four new feminine hygiene products and one new adult diaper product this year to tap deeper into the country's growing market for both product categories.
Takahashi said that his firm would optimize its two plants in Karawang, West Java and Mojokerto, East Java, which started operating in September last year, to produce the new products and meet surging demand for its existing products.
'We are currently preparing to install several new production machines at our plant in East Java. Together, our plants have boosted our production capacity by 120 percent,' he said.
Uni-Charm Indonesia would also continue exporting part of its Indonesian-manufactured products to other ASEAN countries, he added.
