AgriMin to mull Amul plan to run DMS plants tomorrow

GCMMF Chairman says Ministry is positive about proposal to take over loss making unit

The Agriculture Ministry is likely to discuss tomorrow Amul's proposal to run processing and distribution units of loss-making DMS.

The Agriculture Ministry has received a proposal from Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) on taking over DMS operations. The country's largest milk cooperative GCMMF owns Amul  brand.

"A meeting is scheduled tomorrow to discuss this issue," a government source said.

Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS) comes under the Agriculture Ministry which has been toying with the idea of corporatisation of DMS for some time. In 2004, the Centre had even offered to transfer DMS to the Delhi government, but the latter refused accept the proposal.

GCMMF Chairman Vipul Chaudhary said running DMS plant will help increase Amul 's presence in the national capital region.

"The ministry is positive about our proposal. The modalities are not yet finalised. We are interested in having a long-term lease arrangement with DMS," he told reporters on the sidelines of unveiling of Amul's new processing plant in Haryana.

Buying assets worth hundreds of crores is not viable and even the issues related to employees need to be addressed, Chaudhary said.

DMS has 800 employees, but the milk production is only about 250,000 litres a day.

The DMS has milk production and packaging capacity of 5 lakh litres per day, besides a network of 1298 outlets in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Delhi is the largest market for Amul with a daily sale of 2.4 million litres. Amul  has processing capacity of 4 million litres per day in Delhi-NCR.

GCMMF said its annual turnover is expected to grow to Rs 14,000 crore in the current fiscal from Rs 11,668 crore in the last year.