Nestle India to restart sale of Maggi this month

A packet of instant noodles by Maggi is displayed in the showroom at the headquarters of Nestle in Vevey, Switzerland.

On October 26, Nestle India had said it has resumed manufacturing of the instant noodles Maggi and they will hit the markets after getting clearances from food testing labs.
In June, the FSSAI had banned Maggi noodle products saying it was "unsafe and hazardous" for consumption after finding lead levels beyond permissible limits. The company had withdrawn the instant noodle brand from the market.
Nestle India, which took a hit of Rs4.5 billion, including destroying over 30,000 tonnes of the instant noodles since June when it was banned because of alleged excessive lead content, had stated that it would continue with the existing formula of the product and would not change the ingredients.
The Consumer Affairs Ministry had also filed a class action suit against Nestle India seeking about Rs6.4 billion in damages for alleged unfair trade practices, false labeling and misleading advertisements. It was for the first time that the ministry dragged a company to the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) using a provision in the nearly three-decade-old Consumer Protection Act.
Reeling under the Maggi ban, Nestle India had on October 29 reported 60.1 per cent decline in stand-alone net profit at Rs 124.20 crore for the third quarter ended September 2015. Its net sales had declined 32.12 per cent to Rs 1,736.20 crore as against Rs 2,557.80 crore of the July-September quarter a year ago.
It had reported a stand-alone loss of Rs 64.40 crore in the second quarter (April-June) for the first time in the last 15 years, due to the ban on Maggi.
The Maggi issue had also impacted the bottomline of the parent firm Nestle SA.
The Swiss FMCG major had reported 2.5 per cent decline in its consolidated net profit at 4.51 billion Swiss Franc for the first half of 2015. Nestle sales in Asia, Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa (AOA) markets were "overshadowed" by the issue in India, it had said.