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Bengal set for local skimmed milk production
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Sunday, 01 May, 2005, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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By A Correspondent, Kolkata
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Dairy business in West Bengal is about to leap forward as the state is set to produce concentrated milk and skimmed milk powder shortly. A private dairy farm is commissioning a Rs 15-crore milk processing plant at Dhaniakhali in Hooghly district to produce these milk products.
As of now none of the dairies in the organised sector, which supply pasteurised liquid milk to Kolkata and some other towns either run by the state government or by big players like Metro Dairy, Mother Dairy or Amul, have such facilities.
This is despite the fact that 70% of the liquid milk offered by them is made from concentrated milk and skimmed milk powder, which is brought here from Gujarat and northern states. Only 30% of the milk supplied by them is procured from local markets.
Altogether, these players offer 12 lakh litres of milk per day, of which, 3.5-4 lakh litres is sourced from local farmers.
"But if the state has the facility to produce concentrated milk and skimmed milk powder, it will improve local collection of raw milk and thus prevent it going waste during summer," says, Aditya Sikdar, director of Dollon's Foods, which is in debut in these segments.
Sikdar said, "For starters, we would be selling 50,000 litres of concentrated milk to Mother Dairy, which currently imports about 25 tonnes of skimmed milk powder per day from other states. With the availability of 50,000 litres of concentrated milk from us, its import would come down to 15 tonnes." To produce it, the company has embarked on expanding its capacity three-fold to 2.4 lakh litres per day at an investment of Rs 10 crore.
As the expansion programme initially aims to produce concentrated milk, 80% of the additional capacity of 1.6 lakh litres per day will be set aside for this purpose, which will be collected through self-help groups. Right now, the company allows Amul on contract basis.
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