The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (Amul) is striving to achieve a turnover of Rs. 20,000 crore by the year 2020, up from the current Rs. 11,670 crore, said its Managing Director, R.S. Sodhi.
He told presspersons on Monday that among the initiatives they had taken up were paying the highest ever price for milk procurement from farmers in Gujarat and increasing procurement from other States like Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal that currently constituted about 15 per cent. These apart, they were also consolidating their product portfolio, he said.
The price paid to farmers, hiked by 50 per cent over three years, was taken in view of the growing feeling among the younger generation that dairy farming was not remunerative and unviable, he stated. However, the demand for milk was on the rise and per capita consumption was now 265 milli-litres a day.
Speaking of new products after launching its latest, the protein malt beverage Amul ‘Pro' in the Andhra Pradesh market, he said it was priced at about 20 per cent lower than its competitors including multi-national brands - white beverages like Horlicks and Complan and the brown varieties including Bournvita and Boost.
The market was estimated at Rs. 3,000 crore and Amul was confident of taking about 10 per cent by the end of the fiscal.
