Dolphin Milk inks pact with ING Vysya Bank

Visakhapatnam-based Dolphin Milk Products Private Limited has tied up with ING Vysya Bank wherein the bank will extend loans to buy livestock in Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram districts.

"Around 1,800 to 2,000 farmers will benefit from the tie-up. In addition to this, our milk procurement levels will also increase by around 10,000-12,000 litres a day from the next fiscal," M Appa Rao, chairman of Dolphin Milk Products Limited, told Business Standard.

As part of the agreement, ING Vysya has sanctioned a Rs 2-crore loan under the Vysya Dairy Scheme to Dolphin, under which the latter will distribute to its existing milk suppliers for purchasing cattle. The loan installments will be paid to the bank by Dolphin Milk.

"These borrowers have been supplying milk to Dolphin Milk since the last four five years. So we will recover the amounts from the milk suppliers and repay the entire loan amount to the bank within 12 months," Appa Rao said.

"At present, Dolphin Milk is procuring milk from about 600 villages. In the first phase, the bank has released  a Rs 2-crore loan to the milk suppliers from 200 villages which were identified by the Dolphin Milk management. We will distribute the entire loan amount towards purchase of cattle by January 2005. With this, we expect to procure an additional 10,000-12,000 litres of milk from February," he added.

"Our average milk procurement, which was around 50,000 litres per day last fiscal, reached 60,000 litres this fiscal. Due to the agreement with ING Vysya Bank,  we expect our daily average milk procurement to cross 70,000 litres per day," Appa Rao said.

At present, Dolphin Milk is selling 10,000 litres of milk a day under the 'Dolphin Dairy' brand  and is supplying 20,000 litres and 30,000 litres a day to Vijaya Dairy and Kolkata-base Metro Dairy respectively. The company plans to close the current fiscal with a turnover of Rs 50 crore as compared to Rs 45 crore last fiscal.