The “Taste of India” has widened its frontiers even further. Having revolutionised the milk sector in many parts of the country, the owner of brand Amul, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (GCMMF), on Wednesday started operations on the country’s biggest dairy plant in Dharuhera in Haryana.
This dairy is expected to cater to the daily needs for milk and milk products of not only Haryana residents but those of Delhi and NCR too which is the world’s second largest urban aggregation by population.
The dairy will largely be procuring milk from Gujarat and Haryana besides the states of Rajasthan, Punjab and even West Bengal, benefiting a huge chunk of dairy farmers in these areas, who will be part of the cooperative society and hence will get a share of the plant’s profit.
Union agricultural minister Sharad Pawar, while inaugurating the unit, urged GCMMF to expand its network to other states too. The minister said that it was because of the hard work of the dairy farmers in the country that India became the largest milk producer in the world.
Speaking at the function, which was attended by a large chunk of farmers from Haryana and Gujarat, the chief minister of Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that by 2020, India which currently produces 122 million litre of milk would produce 180 million litre per day.
Set up with a total investment of `450 crore, the Dharuhera plant will have a packing facility of 30 lakh litres of pouch milk and 2.5 lakh litres of buttermilk per day besides other products. Speaking to this newspaper, a 48-year-old dairy farmer Jaisingh Bhai Chaudhury said that he had heard about the Amul’s success story in Gujarat and hoped it would repeat in the state of Haryana. “When the plant gets profit, we the farmers in the cooperative society also get a share of it. We are looking forward to the plant’s success,” he said.