Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) will sell 10,000 litres of fresh milk every day in six districts of Vidarbha from August 1. The target is to increase this figure to over 30,000 litres covering the entire region by the end of 2021.
Situated in eastern Maharashtra, Vidarbha region has 11 districts: Amravati, Akola, Bhandara, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Gondia, Nagpur, Wardha, Washim and Yavatmal.
M.T. Kulkarni, Director (Marketing) at KMF, said, “The foray into Vidarbha is part of our sales expansion strategy outside of Karnataka. We will launch in six districts of Vidarbha to start with, and the idea is to cover the entire region by the end of 2021.”
KMF will start with milk, curds, ghee and long life products such as milk powder, paaysam mix, badam milk, flavoured milk, milk powder and cookies, and gradually introduce cold chain products like ice cream, butter, cheese and paneer, said Mr. Kulkarni.
Milk would be transported in special tankers from the KMF dairy in Vijayapura to Chandrapur in Vidarbha, where the federation has set up a packing unit. Two more such units would be added later to cover the entire region for milk distribution. Nagpur would be KMF’s main distribution hub for the region.
KMF collects over 90 lakh litres of milk every day from farmers in Karnataka as against its total sale of around 60 lakh litres.
The federation used to sell 2 lakh litres of fresh milk to Mumbai every day, but the figure has reduced to 1.25 lakh litres. It sells 90,000 litres of milk and curds to Hyderabad, 25,000 litres to Goa (40,000 litres prior to COVID-19), 10,000 litres to Pune (30,000 litres earlier) and 15,000 litres to Solapur, every day. It also sells 7 lakh litres of bulk milk to Andra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala. In addition, 10 lakh litres of its long-shelf milk GoodLife are sold across the country each day.
“Sales volumes have come down due to COVID-19 and floods. But demand is picking up. We still have a surplus of fresh milk. Once we establish in Vidarbha, we will explore more avenues in other States as well,” Mr. Kulkarni added.
