Aavin Will Meet High Milk Demand for Kerala's Onam

COIMBATORE: Ahead of Onam, Kerala's milk demand is shooting up. The Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (Milma) has been buying 60,000 litres of milk from Tamil Nadu Co operative Milk Producers Federation Limited (Aavin) from the Coimbatore plant ever day. The requirement will go up to 5 lakh litres across Tamil Nadu during Onam festival on August 28.
 

"Usually we supply 30,000 litres of milk to Milma every day. However because of Onam the demand was increased to 60,000 litres from August 15. Because of the high demand for milk products in Kerala, Milma has be buying more milk from us than last year," says T Balaji,  general manager, Aavin while speaking to Express.   
 

"Aavin is getting considerable revenue by supplying milk to Kerala. Milma is taking the milk using their own vehicles from our plant here. As a result we are not spending on transport cost. Similarly we used to convert the milk after local usage. Now the cost for milk conversion was also saved," said Balaji.     
 

"Based on the previous agreement signed with the Kerala government, we are supplying a litre of milk at Rs 26 and we are getting 40 paise a litre," said Balaji.   
 

Aavin has been buying 3 lakh litres of milk from farmers through various societies in and around Coimbatore of which 1.5 lakh litres was put to local use and the remaining one lakh litres used to make curd, butter and skimmed milk powder. Similarly the remaining 50,000 litres would be sent to Chennai and Kerala, Balaji said.
 

According to Balaji, the milk supply to Kerala would increase between 2 and 2.5 lakh litres during August 26-27, a day before Onam began. Apart from Coimbatore, about 2.5 lakh litres of milk would be obtained from Salem, Dinidigul, Erode and Tirunelveli on that two days.
 

Owing to the high demand for milk, Kerala government's dairy development department had setup milk quality control laboratories in Walayar and Meenakshipuram check posts at the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border. 
 

The staff have been asked to check the milk and allow only quality milk into Kerala. The checking is expected to continue till August 28.