Members of Tirlán’s Affordable Nutrition team travelled to a very important market in Bangladesh recently to visit both existing and prospective customers in Chittagong and Dhaka and to experience first-hand how our Fat Filled Milk Powders products are being consumed.

Senior Product Manager Powders, Anil Babu Yarlagadda from Ireland, Nitin Agarwal (Regional Sales Manager, ME & Indian SC) and Vipin Kumar (Sales Manager ME & Indian SC) from Tirlán’s Dubai Office travelled to Bangladesh, spending one week in the region to explore opportunities in this rapidly growing Fat Filled Milk Powders market.  

Overherd at Tirlán caught up with Anil on his return to find out more about the team’s very interesting trip and how Tirlán is providing nutritional products to suit local tastes!  

“We had a very interesting and worthwhile trip, especially meeting customers and also interacting with consumers in Bangladesh,” Anil told us. “The market size is about 20,000 tonnes growing at 5-6% annually. Arla product (Dano Pushti) dominates the market, with approximately 15,000 tonnes.”  

Anil said: “We sell our Millac Premium products to importers in the market. The milk powder arrives in 25kg bags and they then re-pack the product into small or medium retail sachet packs which are distributed across the country and consumed mainly in tea, although some people do add the powder to water to make drinking milk.” 

“During our time in Bangladesh, we visited hugely popular tea stands in local markets to get an insight into how end-consumers are using our products and it’s quite clear that Bangladeshis like their tea sweet, with most adding sugar to a product we’ve already sweetened to suit local tastes! Previous market research had told us that consumers do not like milk powder flecks visible when the powder is added to tea. We acted on this feedback, improving the product with the help of a €350,000 investment in Belview which will make our product perfect for their application!”