Amul crosses Rs.50 bn mark

The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd (Amul) has registered 22.9 percent growth to reach a record turnover of Rs.52.55 billion, an increase of nearly Rs.10 billion over the previous year.

Announcing this at the 34th Annual General Meeting at Anand Tuesday, the GCMMF Chairman Parthibhai Bhatol said this was an extremely impressive growth when viewed from the perspective of 13.4 percent growth during 2006-07 and 29 percent in 2005-06. In global terms, the turnover is $1.3 billion at existing currency exchange rate.

Amul is the apex marketing body of 13 district milk unions of Gujarat having a membership of 2.7 million milk producers.

Bhatol said that total milk procurement averaged 7.5 million kg per day, a growth of 12.9 percent, over 6.7 million kg per day during 2006-07. 'During the peak procurement period we have successfully demonstrated our ability to process almost 10 million litres of milk per day,' Bhatol said.

Bhatol said that GCMMF has done remarkably well in most of the value-added consumer packs. Amul milk in pouches has been the largest contributor to the turnover of the Federation with sales up by 48 percent in value terms.

Sales in the flavoured milk segment has risen by 39 percent. While Amul processed cheese recorded a growth of 27 percent, sales of Amul cheese spread too increased by 39 percent.

He further said that to ensure that weaker sections are able to afford Amul butter, special emphasis was given to low unit value packs with a new Amul reduced-salt butter being launched during the year, he added.

In the UHT milk category innovative calcium enriched variant, Amul Calci+ was launched. Since there is a growing demand for pure and natural products in India, GCMMF has introduced use of pure natural vanilla in ice-cream in a wide range of pack sizes, Bhatol said.

Amul Probiotic Dahi had increased the sales in the curd category by 35 percent. The Federation's policy of continuous product innovation was accorded global recognition, when it received the prestigious International Dairy Federation Marketing Award 2007 for the launch of Amul Pro-biotic ice-cream, he said.

'Our public policies should ensure a level playing field for the farmers as well as remunerative returns for him. Then only sustainable way to control unwarranted inflation in food products could be achieved. Long term measures towards incentivising farmers to boost production would bridge the yawning supply-demand gaps,' Bhatol said.

Despite rapid population growth in the country, the per capita availability of milk in India has increased to 245 grams per day which is very close to WHO standards. If we are to maintain this achievement an effective buffer stock mechanism for dairy commodities must be set up to ensure proper management of the demand-supply equation of milk products, Bhatol said. By supporting farmer-owned organizations, government can ensure that maximum share of consumer's rupee goes back to farmers themselves.

Bhatol observed that during the last 62 years, the Amul cooperative movement has served as an effective catalyst in transforming socio-economic landscape of rural India. Amul has also been able to tap the growing demand for value-added milk products which provide higher remuneration to farmers.

'Having countered competition of multinational corporations, as well as the domestic private sector, we are well poised to steer the dairy cooperative sector into an era of greater prosperity and growth,' Bhatol said.