The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) is planning to set up a mega dairy in Bangalore with a capacity of 1 million litres per day at a cost of Rs 90 crore. The new dairy will cater to the export orders, a top KMF official said.
“We are getting a lot of export orders for supply of milk from countries in the Far East and West Asia. We need to set up a new dairy to exclusively cater to the export orders. We want to process and pack the milk in ultra high temperature (UHT) packs and export,” G Somashekhar Reddy, chairman, KMF said.
Presently, KMF exports seven containers of milk (1 container = 16,000 litres) to Singapore. It also supplies milk to neighbouring states like Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Goa, apart from supplying 800,000 litres to the Indian Army every quarter.
Talking to reporters here after launching 10 new value-added products, he said the federation would seek financial assistance from the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and Karnataka government apart from its own internal accruals.
The KMF, which presently sells 4.2 million litres of milk per day, is planning to double its sales to 8 million litres per day in the next five years. “We are confident of doubling our sales as we have a lot of demand from both within the country and abroad. We are encouraging our farmer members to increase their daily output by giving them remunerative prices,” Reddy said.
In order to encourage farmers to produce more milk, the KMF is planning to raise the procurement price by another Rs 2 per litre. Presently, it pays Rs 18.50 per litre to farmers. At the same time, the federation is looking at increasing the retail milk prices by another Rs 2 or Rs 3 per litre. Presently it sells standard toned milk at Rs 19 per litre.
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“We have approached chief minister B S Yeddyurappa his approval for increasing the prices. Once the government approves it, we wish to increase milk prices from March 1, 2011,” Reddy said.
The KMF, today, launched a slew of value-added products under the ‘Nandini’ brand to increase its bouquet of products to over 50. The new products are fruit yoghurt, dry fruits burfi, khova jamoon, assorted sweets packs, sugar free pedha, low fat UHT ice cream, sugar free pro-biotic frozen food, rasgulla and cheddar cheese.