Ice cream brand Cream Bell has acquired Uganda's National Dairy Board plant, besides setting up a dairy plant in Mauritius."In Uganda we are looking at integrated operations where we would produce skimmed milk powder, flavoured milk, juices, packaged water and the Cream Bell brand of ice cream," M S Parikh, CEO of Universal Dairy Products, said.Universal Dairy, a joint venture between C K Jaipuria and Ravi Jaipuria group, owns the Cream Bell ice cream brand in India.Current capacity at the Uganda plant in Kampala is 1.5 lakh litres of milk per day and the company would be investing an additional Rs 35 crore to double capacity there, Parikh said. He, however, did not disclose financial details of the plant's acquisition."We are going to use Uganda as a base to cater to the East African markets," he said adding operations on the project are likely to commence in a year's time.On the company's foray for Mauritius, Parikh said it is currently working on investment plans for a milk processing facility with a daily capacity of 50,000 litres."We have already signed an agreement with the government to acquire the National Milk Board's daily production of 8,000 litres," he said adding that the process has been formulated and deals signed with suppliers in this regard.
