The cooperative movement might not gather steam in Haryana due to sundry reasons but the small and marginal farmers of the state can now fetch better yields with the rise of private players in the field of milk processing.
Jind-based Lakshya Food (India) Limited has set up a milk processing plant at Kandela village of Jind district (about 200 km south-west of Chandigarh) with a capacity of 1.5 lakh litres per day. The plant is set up at an initial investment of Rs 35 crore.
The farmers in Punjab have experienced the rise in income level by joining hands with private players like Nestle and Reliance but for the farmers of Haryana this is a maiden experience.
Talking to Business Standard, Managing Director of the company Baljit Singh Redhu, a qualified engineer-turned-dairy farmer, said that the company envisages to raise the capacity to 5 lakh litres per day in one year and would infuse an investment of Rs 100 crore from debt and internal accruals to expand the operations.
“We have tied up with over one thousand farmers and set up village level milk collection centres and one chilling centres for every ten villages. In order to ensure good quality of milk we educate the farmers at our demonstration farms and discuss their quarries at our centre.” The company has its own R&D team to educate the farmers on latest dairy farming practices. With the expansion of operations we would take more farmers into our fold. A farmer with one or two animals can also tie-up with us can avail financial support under the tripartite agreement with the banks, he added. Lakshya Food has 1,500 animals (1,000 cows and 500 murrah buffaloes) and envisages to add 150 animals every year for next five years.
