Major expansion of dairy sector planned

Hyderabad: To tap the potential for milk production in the State, plans have been drawn to set up a state-of-the-art milk procurement and processing facility in 100 acre near Shamirpet on the outskirts of Hyderabad city.

The District Collector of Medchal-Malkajgiri district has been directed to identify land and hand it over to the Telangana State Dairy Development Cooperative Federation (TSDDCF) at the earliest.

Similarly, the existing milk procurement facility of TSDDCF at Lalapet is also being upgraded into a mega dairy plant by increasing its daily capacity from 5.5 lakh litres per day (LLPD) to 8 LLPD. Modernisation of the mega dairy plant was taken up at a cost of Rs 170 crore.

“Modernisation of Lalapet facility is nearing completion and will commence operations shortly, the work of new facility at Shamirpet will begin soon after the land is handed over,” said Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Minister for Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Dairy Development.

The new facility is fully automated, with 10 LLPD capacity at a cost of Rs 180 crores. It would also have a Rs 30 crore Ultra-High-Temperature (UHT) packaging unit which can handle one LLPD.
There would also be a milk powder plant of 30 MT capacity at an estimated cost of Rs 40 crore that would be part of the new dairy plant.

The State government also plans to have units to produce products such as ice-cream, paneer, butter, curds and sweets at an estimated cost of Rs 30 crore.

Explaining further expansion plans of Vijaya Dairy (marketed by TSDDCF) and its products, the Minister told reporters on Thursday that the State government was pursuing the proposal to give subsidised cattle to 2.17 lakh farmers in the State, as per directions of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao. “The department has estimated cost of the cattle distribution scheme at around Rs 600 crore,” he said.

Officials said members of the four existing cooperative dairies will be benefitted from the cattle distribution scheme which is proposed to provide cattle at 50 per cent subsidy. At present, each milch animal is priced at around Rs 80,000-Rs 1 lakh.

To cope with daily demand, the government has decided to raise the capacity of Vijaya Dairy from the present 4.5 lakh litres to 8 lakh litres per day. As per latest estimations, milk production in the State has crossed 5.5 LLPD from around 2,900 collection centres covering over 65,000 milk suppliers.

The TSDDCF has one milk products factory, seven dairies, 11 milk chilling centres and 126 bulk milk cooling units. Plans are also afoot to establish 1,000 kiosks for selling Vijaya Dairy products at tourist spots, highways and other crowded places across the State.