Karnataka to export milk to South Africa

Thanks to the surplus milk produced across Karnataka through cooperative societies, the Karnataka Milk Federation will this week export milk to South Africa.

"Our first consignment of 16,800 litres of 'Good Life' milk is leaving Chennai port this week to South Africa," an official told IANS here Tuesday.

The federation is planning to export 35-40 lakh litres of skimmed milk to South Africa this year in six-seven consignments in containers of six-lakh litre capacity each.

"Good Life is considered an ideal drink for healthy lifestyle and is popular among fitness conscious people and senior citizens," the official said.

As the largest cooperative dairy federation in south India, KMF exports milk and milk products to 17 countries across South Asia, West Asia (Gulf region), Russia, Europe and Africa under its popular "Nandini" brand.

Owned and managed by 2.25-million producers through 12,334 dairy cooperative societies at the village level, the federation has 13 district cooperative milk unions across the state.

"We secured the first order to ship our high quality cow milk product (Good Life), as has a longer shelf life. Packed in Tetra Pak, it is 99.5 percent fat free and has nine percent SNF (solid not fat)," the official said.

Though the federation had to restrict exports when drought hit the state in 2012-13 and during lean season earlier, it was able to step up on renewed orders from countries like Russia and Singapore for skimmed milk powder and skimmed milk.

"We were able to export 1,000 tonnes of skimmed milk powder to Russia and 150,000 litres of milk to Singapore last fiscal (2013-14) as the south-west monsoon was more than normal and production was high," the official said.

With an average production of 58 lakh litres per day, the federation is targetting to increase it to 65 lakh litres per day this fiscal.

"We hope our producers and farmers will be able to boost milk production, as the state government is giving an additional subsidy of Rs.4 per litre," the official said.