Dolphin Dairy to set up milk powder plant

Dairy plans an investment of Rs 5 crore

Dolphin Dairy, the largest private dairy in north coastal Andhra Pradesh, is planning to set up a milk powder manufacturing unit in Vizianagaram district with an investment of around Rs 5 crore.

"Initially, we plan to begin with a five tonnes per day capacity milk powder plant at Vizianagaram district, and the plant capacity will later be increased to 10 tonnes per day. The proposed plant will commence production by the end of this fiscal," M Appa Rao, chairman and managing director of Dolphin Milk Products Private Limited, told Business Standard.

"At present, the market prices of milk powder are very attractive. While the cost of milk powder production is around Rs 70-75 per kg, the current market prices are hovering around Rs 110 per kg. In addition to this, Dolphin Dairy is expecting surplus milk from this year onwards. This surplus milk will have to be converted into powder. Therefore, we have proposed to set up a milk powder facility," he added.

"In the last fiscal, our daily average milk procurement was around 75,000 litres. This fiscal, it will touch one lakh litres a day. Besides, as we are now selling about 60,000-70,000 litres of milk everyday, we need this milk powder plant at the earliest,"he disclosed.

"During the next fiscal, we want to add two more milk products "� ghee and milk sweets. At present, we selling milk products including curd, butter milk, lassi and energy milk under the Dolphin brand," he said.

"We are now selling 10,000 cups of curd and 2,000 bottles of energy milk everyday. We expect our curd sales to touch 25,000 cups per day in the next two months," he added.

Dolphin Dairy has also recently started production in its cattle feed plant.

"The plant's capacity is 500 tonnes per month and during this fiscal the plant can achieve a turnover of Rs 2 crore," Rao said.

"We have 10,000 milk suppliers in north coastal Andhra Pradesh. We are supplying the entire cattle feed produced from this plant to our milk suppliers only. Besides, our cattle feed quality is much superior when compared to others," he added.