Pune-based Vaishno Devi Dairy enters Gujarat with cow ghee

Around Rs 80 cr investment has been lined up for the two new plants in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh

Pune-based Vasihno Devi Dairy Products private ltd (VDDPPL), which entered the Gujarat market on Tuesday with the launch of its cow milk-based ghee Shubhi, is aiming to expand its manufacturing capacity more than five times in the next one and a half years with an investment of around Rs 105 crore.

This includes expansion at its existing plant at Urali Kanchan in Daund taluka near Pune from a current 300,000 litres per day to 800,000 litres per day by March 2014 with an investment of Rs 25 crore. Besides the company is looking at setting up a greenfield plant at Madhya Pradesh with a processing capacity of around 400,000 litres per day, and also eying acquiring a dairy plant in Andhra Pradesh with a similar processing capacity.

Around Rs 80 crore investment has been lined up for the two new plants in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. All put together, the company's processing capacity would touch 1.6 million litres per day from a current 300,000 litres per day by 2016.

Starting in 2007 with a modest turnover of Rs 12 crore, Vaishno Devi Dairy Products' group turnover has touched Rs 200 crore in 2012-13. Of this, the turnover of VDDPPL is around Rs 151 crore, and the group also has interests in milk logistics and chilling plants etc, and does packaging for dairy players like Britannia among others.

The turnover from ghee last fiscal was around Rs 70 crore, informed Nandkishor Attal, chairman and managing director of VDDPPL.

"We have a current manufacturing capacity of 300 tonnes per month of ghee, and this will treble (to 900 tonnes per month) after the expansion at our Pune plant in complete. We are looking at a 500-600 tpm market across India, of which in Gujarat we aim to sell around 150 tpm of ghee,"Attal explained.