Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Monday approved the setting up of a mega dairy plant with handling capacity of five lakh liters of milk per day involving an investment of nearly Rs75 crore at Bassi Pathana in Fatehgarh Sahib district. Reviewing the progress of Milkfed, Badal was apprised that the upcoming ultra modern dairy plant would process the milk procured from the local milk producer unions into the long shelf life homogenised milk.
The new dairy plant would also process the surplus milk available from other milk plants in the State. The dairy plant would also house an automatic ‘paneer’ plant to meet its growing demand in the market apart from undertaking packaging of milk in tetra and flexi packs. Badal said that it was the high time to focus attention towards the development of dairy sector in order to help the farmers by supplementing their income from dairying on one hand and enhancing the profits of Milkfed on the other, as the traditional agriculture has already reached a plateau.
“The development and growth of dairy sector has assumed all the more significant and pro-active role to play in the current scenario…Now, we should give thrust on the growth of allied farming in terms of dairy, apiary, mushroom cultivation, fishery, piggery, goatry besides horticulture and floriculture,” he said. He said that this would result in improving farmers’ economic lot whose profits have been drastically reduced due to the high cost of agriculture inputs in terms of traditional farming.
To bring far more efficiency in the functioning of the Milkfed, the Chief Minister also gave nod to start fresh recruitment as well as undertake campus recruitments to infuse fresh talent in the organization and to overcome staff shortage with a view to achieve optimum utilization of the milk plants in the state. He also emphasized the need to explore ways and means to primarily focus on the procurement and marketing of milk and milk products to enhance its profitability.
Approval was also given to introduce special line of desi cow breeding so as to market its milk and milk products, which were in huge demand both in the domestic as well as in international market. Badal also asked Milkfed to concentrate especially on diversifying product range with specific thrust on value addition of products as ‘Verka’ was a premium brand not in the country but across the globe.