Himalya International terminating joint venture with Simplot

Himalya International Ltd, a food processing firm based in India, is terminating its frozen foods joint venture (JV) with US-based J R Simplot Company, as per a stock market disclosure.

A meeting of board of directors of the company will be held on July 30, 2014 to ratify the termination of JV agreement with Simplot and deliberate on the effects and way forward to recover the losses through the dispute resolution mechanism, the company said.
 In 2011, Himalya International and Simplot formed a 50:50 JV named Himalya-Simplot Pvt. Ltd, for marketing food items and appetisers. Initially they both invested a total amount of $5 million. The JV aimed at sales of $50 million by 2014.

But the JV did not manage to attain its targets and the exclusivity clause in the JV meant the Indian partner could not independently sell the products which affected the business, especially the frozen appetisers unit.

Himalya has been looking to break the JV for more than a year now. The development would make it free to re-launch its products at retail chains and market it to QSR & HORECA segment.