IDMC to develop sweet making technology

Anand-based Indian Dairy Machinery Company Ltd (IDMC), a wholly owned subsidiary of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), has initiated research work to develop indigenous technology for mechanised sweet manufacturing machinery.

"We have initiated work on developing mechanised sweet manufacturing equipments for our indigenous Indian sweet which were till now prepared manually," said Mahesh Chandra, managing director of IDMC.

In diary and food industry most of the work is mechanised except the traditional sweets which are still prepared with bare hands which can lead to high chances of contamination.

He further said, "We want to mechanise the production system of Indian sweets so that branding of Indian sweets can be done by the company producing it." He added that mechanised production of Indian sweets will led to large scale production, bring uniformity in products and consistency in quality. The company has tied up with IIT Mumbai, IIT Kharakpur and its parent body NDDB to procure expertise knowledge and also to work with its own R&D department in Anand.

"We are also working on developing indigenous technology to replicate imported machinery technology that is used in Indian diary industry," said Chandra. Emphasising on the need to develop substitute technology he said, "After globalisation, the foreign companies have stopped the practice of transferring the technology to Indian manufacturers."

According to him, one of the reason that led to stoppage of transfer of technology is due to the attractive Indian market size which had led foreign companies to open their own marketing offices in India.

Talking about challenges that the company might face, Chandra said, "One of the major challenge that we might face is manpower (researcher) crisis. We need to think on the lines of inventing technology related to mechanised sweet manufacturing technology."

However, he said, "We are begining our efforts and thinking on this process and in three year's time we will come out with this new path breaking technology for diary and food industry."

Talking about the company's strategy for next five years, Chandra said, "The company aims to create a synergy to achieve Rs 300 crore turnover target by the year 2010 through its research and development (R&D) activities."

He further said in a long run it would be the technology that will fuel the company's future growth so its time to emphasize on R&D activities.

"With the development in R&D segment of the company, we expect to grow with a rate of 20 per cent every year," he added. Currently the company has a turnover of Rs 102 crore.