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Milma to increase processing capacity and improve quality of products
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Tuesday, 16 August, 2005, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Gireesh Babu
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Milma, the co-operative union for procuring and selling milk and milk products in Kerala, is trying to win over the market by improving the quality of its products. The Anand type co-operative organisation of milk producers, Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (KCMMF), popularly known as Milma, with over six lakh of farmer members, is the leading supplier of milk and milk products in Kerala.
The state government has asked for an assistance of Rs 88 lakh from the Central Government to upgrade the facilities of Milma. Through the new facilities, the federation is aiming an increase in milk processing capacity up to 12.50 lakh litres per day as against the present capacity of 8.5 lakh litres per day.
Efforts are on to improve the quality of products by ensuring extra care in processing. The federation is planning to set up more bulk coolers at the remote village-level co-operative societies to avoid deterioration of collected milk. The federation has projected an increase of 12% in production and 10% in marketing of milk within the year. With a turnover of Rs 500 crore, Milma has recorded a profit of Rs 1.5 crore in 2004-05.
As the agriculture sector in the state is leaping down from loss to heavy loss, farmers are concentrating on cattle farming, according to P T Gopala Kurup, Chairman, KCMMF. Milk production in the remote areas of Wayanad and Idukki districts are also increasing as per reports. "More people from remote villages are interested in cattle farming and Milma is ready to extend help to these people," he said. The plans for establishing another cattle feed plant in Vayanad district, for helping the increasing number of farmers, is under consideration of the Central Government. The project is in collaboration with NDDB.
Milma procures milk from farmers with a basic price of Rs 12 to Rs 13 per litre, depending on the quality of milk, and sells it in the form of toned milk at Rs 15 per litre. The chairman said that Milma had increased the price of milk given to the producers in the last two years and this helped the federation to get effective co-operation from the farmers.
Milma also imports milk from the co-operative milk federation of Tamil Nadu, Aavin, in case of shortage, which does not exceed 20,000 litres a day.
The increasing competition in the market with the private milk processing companies from neighbouring states is one of the major issues faced by Milma recently. Increasing the quality of milk is a better option to sustain, as the imported milk may have a drawback on quality due to long distance and hours of transportation.
Milma's range of products include pasturised milk, lassi, curd and sambharam (butter milk) in sachet pack, ice-cream in polycups, ghee in sachet, bottles and bulk tins, butter and peda in paper carton, cream roll, sterilized flavoured skimmed milk and Refresh (mango drink) in tetrapack. Milma also produces cattle feed. The products are distributed through 4,500 retail outlets all over the state.
The federation has 10 dairies for milk processing, 14 milk chilling centres, two cattle feed plants with a cumulative capacity of 500 tonnes per day, a milk powder plant of 10 tonnes per day capacity and a well settled training centre for farmers. Over 20,000 people are working either directly of indirectly for the functioning of Milma.
Milma, as an apex body of 2,300 primary milk co-operative societies, has three regional co-operative Milk Producer's Unions, Thiruvananthapuram Regional Co-operative Milk Producers' Union (TRCMPU) Ltd, Ernakulam Regional Co-operative Milk Producers' Union (ERCMPU) Ltd, and the Malabar Regional Co-operative Milk Producers Union (MRCMPU) Ltd. Milma, with a processing capacity of 8.5 lakh litres per day, has a market for 8.25 lakh litres per day. Each TRCMPU and MRCMPU has a capacity to process 3.5 lakh litres of milk per day and rest of 1.5 lakh is managed by ERCMPU.
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