The country’s biscuit production swelled 44 percent to 14,888 tonnes in the last fiscal year, according to a Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) survey done in major eight industrial zones.  

The study was carried out in Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Janakpur, Birgunj, Pokhara, Siddharthanagar, Nepalgunj and Dhangadhi and surrounding regions covering  47 districts. NRB said demand for biscuits was expected to grow due to improved living standards and changing food habits. 

Meanwhile, Homnath Neupane, former president of the Nepal Chamber of Biscuit Industries, said that total annual consumption of biscuits was worth around Rs 10 billion. “Domestically manufactured biscuits accounted for 40 percent of the total consumption in the country,” he said. Neupane added that the biscuit market had been growing as people considered it to be a healthy snack.

Entrepreneurs said that along with a rise in biscuit consumption in the country, they were facing stiff competition from Indian manufacturers. According to the association, domestic biscuits now have a 60 percent share of the market. Neupane said that imported biscuits had been flooding into the country over the last five years, and that the government’s policy should be to discourage them. 

Neupane, who is also the chief executive officer of Nebico Biscuits, said that his company had been seeing an annual growth of 5 to 10 percent though it had been facing some difficulties like increased production costs, high import duty on raw materials and rising prices of wheat flour. 

“This has forced us to bring down the quantity of biscuits per packet in order not to have to increase the price,” he said. Nepali biscuit makers offer a wide variety of biscuits such as sweet, salty, creamy and spicy, among others.

Mahesh Jaju, managing director of Asian Biscuits which launched its Goodlife biscuits in the domestic market three months ago, said that rising demand for biscuits in the domestic market had encouraged them to make a foray into the domestic biscuit industry. “The response has been quite good from urban and rural areas since our launch,” he said. 

The company sells a wide variety of biscuits like Crackies, Mixpix, Thin Arrowroot and Glucose among other spicy, salty and sweet biscuits. “We are also planning to produce various types of sugar-free biscuits and biscuits made of oats,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Bisen KC, store in-charge of grocery items at Bhat Bhateni Supermarket, said that demand for domestic biscuits had been rising 10-15 percent annually. He said, “Customers only asked for imported biscuits a few years ago; but when quality Nepali biscuits also started being produced in various flavours, they have become very popular.”