Lotte Confectionary to market PepsiCo's Quaker oatmeal in Korea

[Photo provided by Lotte Confectionary]

South Korea’s leading snack maker Lotte Confectionary will launch global food and beverage giant PepsiCo’s Quaker hot cereal, or porridge, to win the fast-growing Korean cereal market that is currently shared by two leading companies Nongshim Kellogg and Dongsuh Post.

Lotte Confectionary will start selling four Quaker Oats porridge products, including Quaker Instant Oatmeal Original, in Korea on April 2 and plans to introduce more porridge products with a goal to earn more than 10 billion won ($9.4 million) in sales this year, the company said Thursday. The Korean snack maker will manufacture Quaker oatmeal products in Korea for local sales.

Quaker Oats, born in Ohio in 1877, is one of the world’s top-selling cereal brands and is best known for its instant oatmeal. It was acquired by PepsiCo in 2001, and its sales amounts to nearly 3 trillion won in the North American market alone.

Instant oatmeal is cereals served hot in milk, water or such. Although porridge makes up nearly one-sixth of the global cereal market worth nearly 30 trillion won and Quaker’s oatmeal sales in Europe have grown 12.6 percent on average every year over the past six years, it is still very new to Korean consumers accustomed to cold cereals like sugar-coated, crisped cornflake.

Lotte Confectionary, however, is confident that the porridge has a strong growth potential in the fast-growing Korea cereal market driven by a rise in single-person households preferring easy-to-cook and eat meals.

Currently, the Korean cereal market is estimated at 230 billion won, and it is dominated by two firms - Nongshim Kellogg, a joint venture between Korean processed food manufacturer Nongshim and global food giant Kellogg Company, and another Korean-U.S. joint venture Dongsuh Post.

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