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KMF storms into Vidarbha with fresh milk, curds and ghee
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Tuesday, 03 August, 2021, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
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Karnataka Milk Federation has now stormed into Vidarbha, which is north-eastern region of Maharashtra, to cater to the population with its fresh milk in pouches along with curds and ghee sold under the Nandini brand.
Vidarbha comprises of 11 districts: Yavatmal, Akola, Amravati, Wardha, Buldhana, Washim, Nagpur, Chandrapur, Bhandara, Gadchiroli and Gondia. "But we are looking at six districts to begin with which includes Amravati and Nagpur among others and then work to consolidate our presence in the region. At the moment we estimate a supply of 10,000 litre a day from this area and scale it up to 30,000 litre," stated Mrutyunjaya Kulkarni, director-marketing, KMF, while speaking to FnB News in a telecon.
"Our effort is to push all our value-added products spanning from milk powder, flavoured milk range including cookies and ready to serve paayasam or kheer besides ice cream, butter, cheese, paneer in our range. In Vidarbha going by the vast geographical spread, we are working step wise to cater to the region. We are on an aggressive mode of expansion pan-India as dairy sector indicates promising opportunity for those with high quality and strong marketing network to succeed. We are looking at long shelf products for sale in this region over fresh pouch milk," he added.
"Milk to Vidarbha will be transported in our special tankers from the KMF dairy in Vijayapura to Chandrapur where a packaging unit is set up." The plan is to have two more similar packaging units to be able to extend its reach across the region.
"In fact KMF has surplus milk and collects 90 lakh litre and sells 60 lakh litre a day. It has 100 products and 300 SKUs (stock keeping units). We are familiar with the western India market and the consumption of milk is large here," said Kulkarni.
The Federation has a presence in Mumbai and Pune. Besides it is a recognised player in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala. Its Goodlife which is a UHT processed milk indicates demand. In order to succeed across India, KMF needs its own depot and distributors.
The ongoing pandemic in the initial phase impacted KMF like any other business in the essential category identified by the government. "There has been a total decline in the HoReCa sector following Covid-19 restrictions. We lost around 20 per cent of our sales. However, we are seeing some pick-up in this sector which is opening up and indicating demand. Moreover, Karnataka for fresh milk and other products is driving our sales with a positive consumer recognition to our brand," said Kulkarni.
"During the lockdown phase, our online sales witnessed significant momentum driven by increased digital adoption during the Covid-19 spread which resulted in faster acceptance of omni- channel ways of retailing and therefore we are now pushing this marketing channel to generate the sales revenues," he trailed off.
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