New Delhi: At a time when political parties are sparring over its expansion in poll-bound Karnataka, Gujarat-based dairy giant Amul is likely to set up its first international plant in Sri Lanka.
This comes four months after Sri Lanka sought assistance from the Indian government in setting up a sustainable dairy cooperative.
A team of senior members from the cooperative, led by Amul’s managing director Jayen Mehta, has visited Sri Lanka twice this year, ThePrint has learnt.
Mehta travelled to the neighbouring country in January and in March as government-level talks are on, said a senior cooperative official.
The official further said that Amul has been assigned to set up a plant and boost milk production in Sri Lanka because of its successful operation, branding and ground level network. The project is now at an advanced stage, added the official.
At present, Amul has around 2,400 collection centres across 13 states in India and exports milk products to 50 international locations.
“We are surveying options there,” Amul MD Mehta told ThePrint.
Farmer owned cooperatives Nandini and Amul have been embroiled in a controversy in Karnataka ever since Union Home Minister Amit Shah called for “cooperation” between the Gujarat-based cooperative and the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) in December, prompting the state opposition to allege that it was an attempt to override the local identity.
However, on 5 April, Amul announced its entry into the fresh dairy market in Bengaluru with milk and curd.
Effort to boost Lankan dairy sector
Last month, Sri Lanka Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera attended the Global Conference on International Year of Millet held in New Delhi. He visited the plant of Mother Dairy too.
According to a statement by the Ministry of Agriculture of Sri Lanka, Amaraweera said the Indian government has expressed its agreement to provide high yielding dairy cattle to Sri Lanka. “Due to the decline of the dairy industry in Sri Lanka in the previous year, the dairy and dairy products industry decreased by nearly 19 per cent. Especially, with the ban imposed on chemical fertilizers in 2021, animal feed production has dropped,” added the statement available on the ministry website.
In a statement in December last year, the office of Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe stated that a committee consisting of representatives of the public and private sectors of Sri Lanka has been appointed to work with the multi-disciplinary team of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) of India “to prepare a short, medium and long-term plan to increase local milk production to reduce the country’s dependence on imported milk powder”. ThePrint has a copy of the statement.
“Accordingly, India’s NDDB and the Indian Amul Milk Company have taken steps to provide the necessary technical support for the production of liquid milk in Sri Lanka, and a preliminary discussion was held in this regard at the Presidential Secretariat,” added the statement.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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