Work is in progress at the Salem District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited (Aavin), here, to increase the milk handling capacity from the current three lakh litres per day to five lakh litres. This was disclosed during the visit of Minister for Milk and Dairy Development V. Moorthy to the plant on Wednesday.
The Salem Aavin is the leading producer of milk and also the leading sales distributor in the State. Through its 1,145 registered societies, it procures 4,77,700 litres of milk and after processing it sells about 1.86 lakh litres to the consumers in the local markets in Salem and Namakkal districts. Also, 1.25 lakh litres of milk was supplied to Chennai everyday.
Demand
With the growing demand, various modernisation activities were being undertaken in the plant that includes, augmenting the milk handling capacity, installing homogenizer, milk pasteurizer, cream separator and also four new machines that can pack 10,000 packets per hour.
Also, Aavin has received orders from Delhi to supply 150 tonnes butter of which 60 tonnes have already been sent.
In order to save electricity and fuel, Aavin is in the process of installing solar air heater, solar concentrator and digester all at a total cost of Rs. 3 crore.
With increasing local demands, a proposal has also been sent for enhancing the storage room with capacity of one lakh litres at a cost of Rs. 3.20 crore.
Mr. Moorthy has asked officials to expedite the works. MLAs, Aavin General Manager C. Kadiravan and others were present.
