Amul hikes milk procurement prices, benefit to 7 lakh cattle breeders

Coming into retrospective effect from May 11, the cattle breeders will be paid Rs 640 a kg fat and Rs 290 a kg fat for buffalo and cow's milk respectively. The hike will benefit seven lakh cattle breeders associated with 1,200 milk associations of Amul Dairy.

Ahmedabad: The Amul Dairy has increased milk procurement prices by Rs 10 on a kg of fat for buffalo milk and Rs 4.5 in the case of cow milk following a drop in production due to summer heat, official sources said.

The daily milk income of Amul Dairy was 30 lakh litres in the winter while it has fallen to 25 lakh litres now.

Coming into retrospective effect from May 11, the cattle breeders will be paid Rs 640 a kg fat and Rs 290 a kg fat for buffalo and cow's milk respectively. The hike will benefit seven lakh cattle breeders associated with 1,200 milk associations of Amul Dairy.

Following a rise in summer temperatures, there is a drop in milk production while the price of cattle fodder has increased leading to the economic crisis for the cattle breeders.

GCMMF, which markets dairy products under the Amul brand, is expecting 20 per cent increase in its turnover this fiscal at around Rs 40,000 crore, driven by likely growth in volume and value terms, a top company official said.

Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) posted a 13 per cent increase in its turnover at Rs 33,150 crore during 2018-19 from Rs 29,225 crores in the previous fiscal.

Recently, GCMMF had said that the provisional unduplicated group turnover of Amul Federation and its 18 member unions crossed Rs 45,000 crore in 2018-19, up 13 per cent from the previous year.

The 18 member unions of Amul Federation, with a farmer-member strength of more than 36 lakh across 18,700 villages of Gujarat, are procuring on an average 230 lakh litre of milk per day.

The member unions of Amul plan to enhance the milk processing capacity from the current level of 350 lakh litre per day to 380–400 lakh litre per day in the next two years.