Banas Dairy, one of dairies set up under “Operation Flood” four decades ago, has announced a third unit in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi, the dairy is now led by BJP leader Shankar Chaudhary who is driving its expansion into North India.
The plan in Varanasi includes setting up of a milk processing plant that can initially process five lakh litres per day. It will be set up at the cost of Rs. 500 crore on a piece of land provided by Uttar Pradesh government. The milk processing capacity of this new unit can be expanded to 10 lakh litres per day. Apart from milk, this plant will also produce ice-creams, Curd (Dahi), butter-milk, paneer and cookies.
In August 2021, Banas Dairy had sent Gir cows to 100 families in Varanasi. Gir is an indigenous breed of Cows in Gujarat can give 20-25 litres of milk a day, which is more than the local breed of Gangatiri cows in Uttar Pradesh which gives 5-7 litres. These families were those who underwent a cattle-rearing workshop with Banas Dairy earlier this year.
These cows have already started giving milk. They are collecting this milk and transporting it through a bulk milk carrier to the existing milk processing facility in Kanpur. Banas Dairy currently collects 30,000 litres of milk from Varanasi and nearby areas which includes milk from Gir Cows and the indigenous Gangatiri.
Banas Dairy has been expanding into other states including Uttar Pradesh since 2016-17. It also has a unit in Faridabad (Haryana) which can process 13.5 lakh litres of milk per day.
The milk procurement prices paid by milk cooperatives in Uttar Pradesh in April 2021 stood at Rs. 43 per kilogram which is an increase by 13.15 per cent compared to last year. This is more than what was paid in Gujarat (Rs. 40.3 per kg) during the same period. Kerala pays the highest remuneration at Rs. 46.91 to milk producers.
When we first entered Uttar Pradesh four years ago, milk producers were getting just Rs. 12-13 for every litre of milk. We started paying Rs. 28-30 per litre and so competitors also had to increase the prices,” Chaudhary said.
Uttar Pradesh already has a host of dairies and ice cream manufacturing companies that procure milk. This includes entities like Mother Dairy Food Processing Ltd, Vadilal Industries Ltd and Heinz India Pvt Ltd.
Banas Dairy has started milk procurement from farmers in Uttar Pradesh on the Amul pattern. More than 2000 village-level cooperative societies have been formed to help procure milk from farmers. “Similar to the model in Gujarat, we are making these groups of women who will come together to form a milk cooperatives and they will be in charge of milk procurement,” Chaudhary said.
The proposed milk processing facility at Varanasi will be the third plant of Banas Dairy in Uttar Pradesh selling milk and milk products under the brand Amul. The biggest plant is at Jaunpur near Kanpur which has an 8 lakh litres per day of producing milk pouches. The plant set up in 2016-17, also manufactures 0.6 lakh litres per day of butter milk, 30 metric tons per day of Dahi and 10 metric tons per day of Ghee.
The second plant with 5 lakh litres per day of milk processing capacity was commissioned in 2017 at Chakgajeria in Lucknow. This plant also has 36 million tons per day of Dahi, 10 million tons per day of paneer, 0.5 lakh liters per day of butter milk, 50 lakh litres per day of ice creams and 8000 litres per day of flavoured milk manufacturing capacity.