Company Overview

Prior to liberalisation in mid 1990s, India used to have a controlled hop industry, with Indian breweries using locally-grown hops in the flower form, as importing processed material was not allowed. When the Government of India deregulated the market, and breweries could freely import hops, the local produce was suddenly rejected, for the brewer now had access to standardised, processed hops. This meant that the farmers who had been growing hops now had nowhere to sell them as there is no other industry that uses this niche product.

While looking to start an agro-based venture, when the young entrepreneur saw mounds of hop flowers going to waste, he decided to set up a hop processing unit to enable the farmers of Lahaul-Spiti to realise earnings for their hop produce.

Aromatrix started as a vertically-integrated agri-processing company that provides a single-point channel for processing, packaging and shipment of hops from farm to brewery. For many years, Aromatrix worked with an assured buy-back arrangement with the farmers of Lahaul-Spiti, thus single-handedly assuring them of a stable source of income for their year’s work. Today, business prudence has directed the company to owning hop ranches in USA to ensure a steady supply of raw material in this highly cyclical industry.

Hops and apples are grown in the same agro-climatic regions in most parts of the world. While overseeing harvest and post-harvest of hops, one cannot miss the buzz of the apple sector, whose harvest is also in about the same time period. Presence in the Hop and apple growing regions of Himachal Pradesh and Washington State in USA, lead us to venturing into the apple sector too. While the company started solely as a hop processing facility, a few years ago it very decisively entered the apple industry as well.

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Hop Factory and Products

The first-ever hops pelleting facility in India was commissioned in November 2000 at the modest beginnings of Aromatrix at Baddi, an industrial zone, about 170 miles from the National Capital of Delhi.
The company has constantly tried to reinvent itself, and keep abreast of latest technological developments in the field of hops and hop products.

While a substantial proportion of hops and hop products in the country is still imported mainly from Europe and USA, with the setting up of this venture, the brewers in India now have access to quality processed hops right at home. This offers an undeniable advantage to Indian breweries in terms of cost and time economics, invenory management and logistical ease.

Our hop factory at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh, has a Cold Storage capacity of 1, 200 Metric Tonnes. All material is tagged, and stored safely till dispatch orders.

The Company possesses pelleting facility for T-90 as well as Iso pellets. Our hop extraction facility was commissioned in 2007 followed by the isomerisation facility in 2008. From the year 2009 AFPL has been supplying all the Key value added hop products, i.e., Pellets, Iso Pellets, Extracts and Isomerised Extracts to breweries in India.

The state-of-art extraction plant uses CO2 as a solvent under ultra high pressure of upto 435 Bar for extraction of active ingredients from natural plant material, including hops. This plant is the first of its kind to be setup in India. We also make other value-added hop products.

We hope to supply Tetra Extract, Reduced Extract as well as purified iso alpha extracts from 2017-2018.

AFPL continuously collaborates for technical advantages with Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT) and the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

We started tentatively with marketing our product in 2000, and today we supply hops to all the major breweries in India including SABMiller, Carlsberg India, United Breweries, Inbev India, Molson Coors, and other local breweries in India. We can claim with some pride that all major beer brands in India contain hops supplied by Aromatrix.

We are the sole hop-experts in India; we have expertise in all aspects of hop business

- Setting up a hop farm (trellis erection, cultivation, harvesting)
- Setting up a hop-processing plant (which includes the picking plant, drying & curing plant, pelleting plant, extraction plant, downstream products processing plant & packing plant)
- Cold storage and laboratory analysis
- Brewing support

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American Operations
Hop Yard and Infrastructure

Our hop yards are laid out in the traditional high-trellis structure, with the trellis wire at about 20 feet height. While a new crop can start giving yield right from first year in some varieties, crop usual becomes commercially viable from the third year of cultivation. Hop shoots emerge from the root stock in early May in existing cultivations, and reach their full height of 20 feet in about two months. Side shoots then emerge and bear female cones with Lupulin glands inside. These glands contain the resins and essential oils that impart the flavour and aroma to beer.

Our irrigation system consists of a drip irrigation line drawn from the Williamette River. The hop yard is fed fertilizers as and when required through this system.
Harvest starts in end-August and can go on till end-September, depending on the varieties to be harvested.

Aromatrix is investing further in building its infrastructure in its American farms. Expansion includes addition of acreage and also picking equipment, drying kilns and packing machines.

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Founding Directors

Mr. Ashish Shankar is the founding director of the Company. Post his Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from IMT Ghaziabad in 1997, Ashish worked for a year with the Japanese major, Canon India Private Limited as a Management consultant.
His responsibilities included doing the industry analysis and formulating marketing strategies along with getting on-field sales experience. He started Aromatrix as a young entrepreneur and has set it up from scratch. Ashish is a founding Director and Chief Executive Officer at Aromatrix Flora. His responsibilities include looking after the overall functioning or the Company with especial emphasis on looking after the finance, marketing and research and development.

His experience spans 19 years in areas of technical consulting, Research and Development, Marketing and Farmer empowerment in hop and apple industry.

Mr. Vinay Shankar is an engineer from IIT Rourkee, with over 57 years of work experience in various sectors, including his years with Aromatrix Flora Private Limited. Relevant experience in working with Government of India and State Government including Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Science & technology and in the State.
Experience at the district level including issues relating to agriculture. He has worked as Managing Director, Morena Mandal Sahakari Shakkar Karkhana, MP which involved setting up Bagasse based captive boiler and power plant.

He is a founding Director and Chairman at Aromatrix Flora and guides the company with directional inputs.

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Core Team Members

Mr. Vineet Guptais the General Manager of Baddi Operations. He is an engineer from University of Rajasthan. He has vast experience in projects commissioning,maintenance and designing. He has worked in many leading Companies like, Indorama Synthetics (India) Ltd., Parasrampuria synthetics Ltd., Procter & Gamble India & Indonesia.

Mr. Abhishek Ghosh is the Head of Q.C (quality control) and R&D (research & development) units of Aromatrix Flora Pvt. Ltd. He has many years of research experience from IIT Delhi. His research work has been published in the journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry, U.K (RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 53963) He holds a master's degree in Biomedical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata and graduate degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sambalpur University, Orissa.

Rajesh Katoch is Manager of our Kullu operations. He looks after procurement and marketing of fresh fruit and is responsible for our farmer linkages and outreach programmes. He is a qualified B Tech from REC, Hamirpur and MBA from Panjab University. He has worked with the Adani group and was involved with setting up and running their Cold Chain project with CA Store in Shimla for about 8 years.

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