Sri Vijaya Visakha Milk Producers’ Company Ltd popularly known as Visakha Dairy, which clocked a turnover of Rs.1,100 crore with a profit of Rs.1.66 crore during 2015-16 by focusing on diversification of its products, has set its eye on overseas market.
“Owing to our commitment to expand and help milk producers in all possible manner by passing on our profits, we could increase the turnover from Rs.11 crore in 1986 to over Rs.1,000-crore. The milk procurement also increased from 40,000 litres to over seven lakh litres per day over past 30 years,” dairy chairman Adari Tulasi Rao told reporters on Saturday. Stating that they were yet to finalise the products and the areas where they would do business outside the country, he said they had already expanded their business in Odisha, West Bengal, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
In the process to expand the market outside Visakhapatnam, they set up aseptic parking station wayback in 2001 to produce ultra heat treated milk (UHT) with a capacity of 30,000 litres per day. It was expanded to three lakh litres per day over the years. The dairy enjoys an estimated 10 per cent market share in UHT after Amul.
Visakha Dairy, which became a milk producers’ company in 2006 was the first in the country to introduce ultra pasteurised milk with extended shelf life up to 14 days with the State of the art technology from Elecster, Finland.
Mr. Rao, who will be completing 30 years in office on August 30, said “through constant motivation sessions, the farmers are being encouraged to increase milk production.”
Mr. Rao said to cope with the excess milk procurement, he realised that that declaring milk holiday was no solution. Hence, he focused on setting up more milk powder plants.
Asked to comment on their success story, he said they believed in zero interference in the functioning of the dairy from top to the bottom. Visakha Dairy opted for conversion into a cooperative society after introduction of Mutualy Aided Cooperative Societies Act (MACS ACT 1995) in 1999.
Managing Director S.V. Ramana and Director Reddy Ramakrishna said every year they were spending Rs.8 crore on medical expenses of milk producers. The company, which runs a super-speciality hospital in the city, pays bonus thrice a year incurring total expenditure of Rs.60 crore.
