Chandigarh, May 15
Punjab may be flopping on fronts like health, information technology but its flavoured Verka lassi, desi ghee,ice-cream, sweetened milk, panjiri, paneer, curd, and kheer are doing very well in the national and international market. Milkfed, state’s leading cooperative, known for Verka brand in and outside the country has achieved 64 per cent growth in the sale of lassi, 37 per cent in sweetened flavoured milk, 31 per cent in ghee, 21 per cent in ice cream, 70 per cent in kheer and 39 per cent in paneer last year. Desi ghee and lassi have been traditionally strong area of Punjab.
Milkfed, that has achieved overall growth of 21 per cent last year, is in fact expecting big increase in the milk collection in winter this year. Owing to this reason, it has already started looking for new markets in Delhi and elsewhere to sell milk and its products.
Impressed by the performance of Milkfed, some of the leading companies in milk business Yoplait group, second biggest fresh dairy product company in the world, has approached it for long -term partnership.
There has been 31.08 per cent growth in milk procurement in the first fortnight of the May known as a lean period as far as procurement of milk is concerned. During first 12 days of May, the average procurement of milk was 8.83 lakh kg compared to7.01 lakh kg of corresponding period in the last
year. Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Patiala, Ludhiana, Ferozepur and Jalandhar districts are doing very well with regard to the milk procurement.
Overall turnover of the Milkfed had gone up to Rs 918 crore by the end of
last financial year and it would cross Rs 1,000 crore at the end of current
year. Increase in the turnover has been to the extent of 20.9 per cent in 2007-08 compared to the previous fiscal year.
V.K. Singh, managing director , Milkfed, said the biggest challenge before his organisation was to find new markets to sell milk products. Our plants can process milk up to 14 lakh kg per day but “ we are expecting milk procurement touching figure of 17 lakh kg during the winter this year. Hence, we need new markets to sell milk and its products”, he said.
Milkfed had given best price Rs 14.50 per kg cow milk and Rs 17.50 per kg for buffalo milk. “To keep dairy farmers and other milk producers in the state motivated , we will not slash its price during the flush season”, he said. Except Amritsar and
Sangrur, all other milk plants in cooperative sector were doing very well, he added. He said Milkfed was in profit and would become a blue-chip organisation in a year or two.
“Efforts made by us in enhance milk production by supporting the setting up a new dairy farms has started giving dividends”, he said. “We are supplying milk even in Srinagar local market and also looking to develop market in north-east such as Assam to sell milk products especially value added ones. There was a plan to set up a plant near Delhi because that was a biggest consumer market. Ares in which Milkfed is not showing promise is table butter that has registered a negative growth of 11 per cent and internal and external sale of skimmed milk that has registered a negative growth of 24 per cent. There are also problems on human resources front because private sector has been keeping eye on its professionals and luring them away by offering higher pay packets. V.K. Singh said “ We would have to adopt the corporate pattern to higher and retain best talented persons in milk sector to compete with private sector”.
