Bihar's state-run Cooperative Milk Federation (COMFED) has shown interest im running the assests of Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS) in the national capital, making it the second state cooperative after Amul to evince interest in operating the loss-making DMS.
Delhi Milk Scheme, which comes under the ambit of the union agriculture ministry has been making losses for quite some time now. DMS has milk production and packaging capacity of 5 lakh litres per day, besides a network of 1,298 outlets in Delhi-NCR.
The government-owned dairy unit has 800 employees, but the milk production is only about 2.5 lakh litres per day.
"We had earlier also given a proposal to the ministry to allow us to sell Comfed products through DMS outlets in the capital, which was now rejected and now that the government is looking at corporatisation of DMS, COMFED is keen to participate in that,"COMFED Managing Director Harjot Kaur told reporters.
Kaur was in the capital to launch the Sudha brand of milk and milk products, which is manufactured by COMFED.
She said he cooperative could be interested in running DMS's milk processing plants and outlets on a rental basis. The Corporatisation of DMS will have to be cleared by the union cabinet
Comfed purchases around 13 lakh kilograms of milk per day in Bihar from a network of over 12 lakh 600 cooperatives. It sells around 950,000 litres per day.
Delhi is the largest organised milk market in the country, with sales of over 40 lakh lires per day. "We will initially plan to sell around 200,000 litres of Sudha brand milk in the Delhi market and slowly scale up our operations," Kaur said.
She said the milk would be transported from Bihar and processed and packaged in the capital and sold through retail outlets.
"We would not procure any milk from Delhi and NCR regions, but process it in a plant in JP Nagar. Sudha already has tied up with 12 distributors, but would later scale up," Kaur said. EoM
Delhi is the largest market for Amul with a daily sale of 24 lakh litres. Amul has processing capacity of 40 lakh litres per day in Delhi-NCR.
