Indian dairy co-op Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation has said its launch of an Amul milk processing plant in Mumbai will help it deliver a consistently high quality of product.
Rupinder Singh Sodhi said setting up and maintaining a company-owned plant may cost slightly more than a hired one but it always delivers a better quality. “We are going for our own manufacturing facility rather than a hired plant,” he said.
“Mumbai’s increasing demand for a larger variety of fresh dairy products rather than a simple growth in demand for processed milk made the company decide in favour of a company-owned facility.”
The plant is producing liquid milk, butter milk, dahi (yoghurt) and ice cream. Its milk processing capacity of one million litres per day will help augment Amul output from another in-house manufacturing facility near Mumbai, in Boisar, and two licensed third-party-owned plants, which also service demand from India’s commercial hub.
Nationwide, Amul has a daily milk processing capacity of 13m litres and annual sales of US$2.5bn.
There have also been reports in the Indian press that the co-op is planning to build a new milk processing plant with a daily capacity of 500,000 litres in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, near Lucknow.
However, the company has refused to confirm these plans to just-food.
