Farmers and milk suppliers affiliated to Visakha Dairy will attend a general body meeting of the cooperative society on September 17, where they will celebrate the long tenure of Adari Tulasi Rao who has served as chairman of the dairy since 1986.
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Visakha Dairy has come a long way under Mr. Tulasi Rao’s stewardship, growing from a 7,000 litre-a-day plant to generating over five lakh litres a day now. Its annual turnover has increased from a mere ₹11 crore to around ₹1,500 crore today.
Farmers of north-coastal districts will attend the general body meeting.
Mr. Tulasi Rao was elected chairman on August 29, 1986. Due to his untiring efforts, the dairy has been continuously making profits and declaring bonus for farmers ever since he assumed charge as its chairman.
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During his tenure at the helm of the dairy, a training centre was established to impart training to farmers in the areas of milching, cattle feeding, fodder development and animal healthcare; 100 bulk milk cooling centres with a storage capacity of 10 lakh litres a day were established; a milk powder plant, with a capacity of 13 metric tonnes a day, was established in 1998; and marketing activities were extended to Odisha, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.
Visakha Dairy commands 10% market share in Ultra Heat-Treated Milk (UHT) after Amul and Nandini brands on a pan-India basis. It also started the ultra-pasteurized milk with an extended shelf life up to 14 days in 2010.
A new range of products like: extended shelf life milk, aseptic flavoured milk, milk shake, yoghurt, lassi, ice-cream, sweets, ghee and paneer were introduced.
Mr. Tulasi Rao had started Milk Producers Employees Educational Health & Medical Welfare Trust in 1989 to extend education and employment opportunities to the children of farmers and medical facilities to farmers.
A multi-speciality hospital with state-of-the-art facilities (Krushi Hospital) was inaugurated in 1998. The trust had taken up construction of reservoirs, borewells and water tanks in the district and had funded development works at government hospitals like KGH and Sabbavaram PHC.