GCMMF’s Virar dairy plant has gone critical with hundreds of farmers joining its dairy cooperative movement in Maharashtra. The Amul Dairy has initiated milk procurement operation by organising cooperative societies in Maharashtra, with the commissioning of its Rs 180 crore project Virar Dairy.
The dairy has already set up four village level co-operative societies with membership of 500 farmers and expanding.
Virar Dairy has installed capacity of 10 lakh litre of milk processing per day. Newly set up dairy plant on 11 acre of land will cater to the consumers of Mumbai city and its suburbs with fresh milk and milk products.
In a bid to set up modern cold chain, Amul Dairy has installed rapid milk chillers at its newly formed village societies in Maharashtra. The milk chillers have been developed in association with Massachusetts Institute of Technology of USA which can run on batteries and on grid power. The cooperative has also started distribution of high quality feed and veterinary care services through qualified veterinarians to take care of treatment of animals round the clock.
The dairy is claiming that automatic pick and place system of milk pouch filling in crates is not only first in India but also in the world. “The 50,000 litres per hour integrated milk reception, processing and on-line pasteurisation, standardisation and homogenisation facility is first of its kind in India. The traffic management system for operations such as conveying of crates, robotic crate filling of milk pouches from high-speed milk packing machines, each with 160 pouches per minute with on-line check weighers on milk packing lines are controlled through a centralised computer monitoring system,” read a media statement from Amul Dairy.
The Virar Dairy is equipped to manufacture two lakh litre of ice cream per day with range of products. It has dedicated facility for fermented products, first of its kind in India, to produce and pack 1.5 lakh litres butter milk and 50,000 litres curd among fermented products.
-With input from ET
