Heritage to up milk procurement from AP

Heritage Foods India Limited is aiming to increase milk procurement from Andhra Pradesh by 15 per cent every year over the next three-four years. The company currently procures 8 lakh litres of milk per day from three states "" Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

"Of the total milk procured from these three states, about 60 per cent comes from Andhra. We are now upgrading our infrastructure facilities across the state where there is a potential to boost our milk procurement," NV Venkata Rao, vice-president (procurement, inputs), Heritage Foods, told Business Standard.

Heritage has about 57 milk chilling and milk packing stations and 20 bulk coolers. It has decided to add 15-20 bulk coolers every year across the state, particularly in the north coastal Andhra Pradesh.

"At present, we procure between 22,000 litres and 30,000 litres of milk a day from the Vizag region. We are targeting to touch 1 lakh litres in 2008-09 and 2 lakh litres by 2009-10," he said. Accordingly, the company is adding 20 more bulk coolers in this region during this fiscal. Each cooler would cost about Rs 14 lakh.

The company also has plans for Maharashtra. Two months ago, Heritage Foods purchased a dairy in Sangavi district, and is now procuring about 50,000 litres of cow milk a day from the surrounding areas. After processing, the milk is being marketed in Mumbai, Pune and Baramati areas.

"In Maharashtra, we are directly procuring milk from farmers and are undertaking awareness and educational programmes for milk producers on collection of clean milk. We aim to procure 2 lakh litres of milk a day from Maharashtra over the next two years," he stated.

With these initiatives, the company expects its milk procurement to cross 10 lakh litres per day during the next fiscal.