Visakha Dairy sales up 15% last fiscal

Visakha Co-operative Dairy, the largest co-operative dairy in the state, has registered a 15 per cent growth in milk sales during the just ended fiscal, when compared to the previous fiscal.

The higher milk sales has boosted the dairy's turnover in 2003-04 by Rs 20 crore to Rs 200 crore.

"During 2002-03, Visakha Dairy had an average daily liquid milk sales of 2.02 lakh litres. This has increased to 2.33 lakh litres per day for 2003-04, registering a growth of about 15 per cent. This was largely due to the opening up of new sales counters in East Godavari district," N V Venkata Rao, managing director of Visakha Co-operative Dairy, told Business Standard.

Until 2002-03, Visakha Dairy was concentrated only in the three north coastal Andhra districts "" Srikakulam, Vijayanagaram and Visakhapatnam "" for milk distribution and milk collections. In the last fiscal, the dairy sold an average of 30,000 litres of milk per day in East Godavari district.

The higher milk sales has boosted the dairy's turnover in 2003-04 by Rs 20 crore to Rs 200 crore, when compared to the previous year's turnover of Rs 180 crore,thus registering a growth of 10 per cent, he said.

During this fiscal, milk procurement also increased nominally by four per cent. "During 2003-04, our average milk procurement per day was 3.18 lakh litres, as against 3.04 lakh litres in the previous year and during the current fiscal we have targeted to procure on an average around 3.34 lakh litres per day," he said.

"During the current year, our liquid milk sales on an average will touch 2,56 lakh litres per day and our turnover will cross Rs 210 crore," he said.

"As the milk procurement figures get higher every year, we are also adding bulk coolers. During the just ended fiscal, we have set up eight new bulk coolers and in the current fiscal also we are planning to set up another 10 bulk coolers," he said.

"To procure more milk from these four districts, we plan to form new co-operative societies. At present, we have 842 co-operative milk societies in the villages, 27 of which were added in the last fiscal. This fiscal, we have plans to add another 28 societies as these societies can boost our milk procurement," he explained.

"To increase milk sales, we have been increasing the milk sale points every year. In the last fiscal, we set up 204 new milk booths. At present, we have 1,704 milk booths and in this fiscal we plan to open another 300 booths in a phased manner," he said.