The Ceylon Biscuits Limited Marketing - Assignment

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Part 1- Organizational Analysis:
Ceylon Biscuits Ltd was founded in late nineteen sixties by under taking contract from
Sri Lankan government and Care International (USA) to manufacture protein enriched
biscuits for Sri Lankan school children as a mid day meal. While dealing in this contract
manufacturing for the Care International, it was noticed by the company that excess
production capacity was there. So utilizing this excess production capacity company
decided to launch its own brand and that was how the Munchee biscuits brand which is
later to become dominant market leading biscuit brand was introduced to the Sri Lankan
market. Till late nineteen nineties Munchee was not the dominant biscuit brand in Sri
Lanka. Till that time from the starting of the Ceylon Biscuits, the company was engaged
in contract manufacturing for Huntley and Palmer of associated biscuits UK other than
producing biscuits for Care International.
From the beginning of new millennium, Munchee brand started aggressively
invading the biscuits market of the Sri Lanka and now the company Ceylon Biscuits has
become one of the largest privately owned group of companies of the Island. With the
dawn of the new millennium, Ceylon Biscuits launched its diversification drive by setting
up its wholly own subsidiary CBL Foods for chocolate, cake and jelly production and at
the same time CBL took controlling share of Lanka Soy, Convenient Foods (Samaposha)
and Cecil Foods so that the company has now in a position to offer diverse of products to
the food market of the Sri Lanka.
Vision of the Ceylon Biscuits Ltd is to become leader in confectionary in South
Asia with a global presence and recognition. As a privately owned group of companies,
CBL group has no clearly explicit mission. Instead what the company CBL does is
adapting set of marketing objectives, like increasing market share of a certain brand by
some percentage for achieving each year.
Today CBL group’s core business is food manufacturing and initially it was
limited to biscuits manufacturing. Then the company moved to manufacturing of
chocolates under the brand name of Ritzbury, and also manufacturing of cakes under the
brand name of Tiara and also wafer biscuits manufacturing under the same brand
Munchee and recently company ventured into production of instant jelly under the brand
name of Go Jelly. During the same period the company has taken controlling share of

Lanka Soy, Samaposha and Cecil so now CBL is competing in fruit drinks market, Soy
product market and serials and snacks markets of the country.
In term of market share the flagship brand Munchee is holding over 60% market
share in the biscuit market of the country and cake brand Tiara is holding around 80%
market share by almost whipping out other competitors in the market. At the same time
other dominant brand Ritzbury is having 50% market share in the chocolate slab market
and over 70% market share in chocolate coated product market. So it can be concluded
that in areas of biscuits, cake and chocolate markets, CBL has been market leader in the
Sri Lankan market for past few years and most likely the company would be able to
maintain its dominance in the market.
Fig: 1 Munchee Biscuits market share in the market. (Source: AC Nielson retail audit)

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Fig: 2 Chocolate Slab market share of Ritzbury for year 2010 (Source: AC Neilson retail
audit)
When it comes to explain resources availability of CBL group, over 2000 work force is
employed by the group in their, Pannipitiya, Ranala, Minuwangoda, Ratmalana and
Kandy factories. Land area of Pannipitiya plant was fully filled with plant buildings and
no further building expansion is possible there. In Ranala plant, which is nearly a 13 acre
facility, only small land area is available for future expansion. In term of land area
availability, situation of premises such as Kandy, Minuwangoda and Ratmalana are also
more or less same as above. Therefore the group has invested in Seethawaka Industrial
Park and where group is going to set up their new production facility solely for exports.
As company vision says, CBL is targeting vast market opportunities in the sub
continental Indian region, the group has already bought land in Bangladesh for its first
overseas manufacturing facility.
So far the group has been operating as a privet limited company which is now
almost 12billon Rupees Company, is in the process of considering to become a public
limited company as company has grown too big already and also huge investments are in
demand in order to make sizable presence in the Indian/Bangladesh markets.

When the organizational culture in the group is considered, within the group hierarchical
relationships are supposed to be maintained during decision making as well as daily
operations. There is presence of trade union (Inter Company trade union) in CBL
Pannipitiya of which employees are enjoying high bargaining power than other factories
of the group where there is no unionized environment available.

Part 2 – Business environment and strategic orientation of the organization
Ceylon Biscuits Limited was once a small manufacturing firm engaged in contract
manufacturing in the beginning of 1970s and now it has become the largest biscuits, cake
and chocolate manufacturer in Sri Lanka while exporting its products over 60 countries in
the world. Throughout the journey of CBL from a small biscuits manufacturer to a
diversified leading business group in the country, one of major remarkable major strength
can be observed. That is strong corporate leadership of the chairman and the director
board. Under the farsighted corporate leadership of the company, the company has
aggressively expanded its operation, has achieved dominant market shares in its all major
product categories and also has invested heavily in new plants, factories, technologies in
order to sustain and improve current level of aggressive market performance of the
company.
During the recent history CBL, the group has won several awards giving
testimony to excellence performance of the company. Some of which can be mentioned
as follows.
Food Award of Excellence in Confectionary
Product Brand of the Year for four consecutive years
Brand of the Year for two consecutive years (Awarded by Sri Lanka Institute of
Marketing)
Winner of Gold for Innovative Brand of the Year (Awarded by Sri Lanka Institute
of Marketing)
Innovative Brand of the Year (Awarded by Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing)
Winner of Gold for Industrial Excellence in the Extra Large category at the
Annual National Chamber of Industries Achievers (CNCI) Awards
Gold Award in the Extra Large Category Exporter – Agriculture Value Added
Products (Awarded by National Chamber of Exporters)
National Award for Export Excellence (Awarded by Ministry of Trade and
Commerce)