Prices of Aavin’s butter and ghee have been hiked by the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation Ltd from Wednesday.
Apart from milk, Aavin’s most popular products are its cooking butter and ghee.
The city consumes three tonnes each of Aavin’s cooking butter and ghee a day.
The price of cooking butter (500 gms) has been increased from Rs. 130 to Rs. 160 and that of ghee (1 litre tin) from Rs. 290 to Rs. 370.
Cheese, another popular product, has witnessed a hike of Rs. 15 per 200 gm packet.
However, prices of items including milk, ice cream, yoghurt, hot milk and butter milk remain the same.
Sources said the price rise was not very steep and that their products were still priced lesser than those of the private players.
“Almost every brand is selling one litre of ghee in the Rs. 400-band, we are still not in that price band. We have only rationalised our prices so that it will become more economically viable,” said a source.
The hike was also necessitated to prevent Aavin products being repackaged and sold, according to an Aavin official.
“We had to stop 15 litre ghee packs as there were instances of our ghee being repacked and sold just before Deepavali,” he added.
This hike, which comes after two years, however, will not help Aavin much financially, as milk constitutes 90 per cent of its Rs. 3,400-crore annual turnover.
Subashree Gokulakrishnan, a resident of Madipakkam, said the hike was ill-timed.
“Households will require ghee for Pongal and Koodaaraivalli when sweets will be made using lots of ghee,” she said.
Nirmal P, a resident of Anna Nagar, said his family used 4-5 kg of ghee a month, which means a hike of Rs. 400 in the family budget.
“During festivals we use more. We strongly object to the steep hike,” he said.
