Hope for improving dairy business: through cooperation among cooperatives

Kamdhenu Dairy Development Cooperative (KDDC) and Dumarwana Milk Producers’

Cooperative (DMPC) jointly organized an exchange visit to Amul, India from 18 March to
23 March 2018 to learn marketing techniques and to look for support from Amul in the
selection of dairy equipment. Both the cooperatives are collaborating with Agriterra for
their business improvement. Furthermore, the objective of visit is to exchange the idea of
Agripool concept with Amul management.

Amul and its structure

SS Sundaran, public relation officer, welcomed the visiting team and presented the history
of Amul and it’s 3-tire structure. Formed in 1948, Amul is the biggest dairy cooperative
of India owned by 3.6 million milk producers in Anand, Gujarat, India. Amul is the
abbreviation form of Anand Milk Union Limited.

It has 3-tire structure. 1. Village Dairy Cooperative

Society (VDCS) – It is a primary cooperative that
bulks the milk collected from member farmers and
supplies the chilled milk to the District Union.

2. District Milk Cooperative Union (DMCU) – The

union is formed by one representative send from
each VDCS. It collects milk from different VDCS
and process into different dairy products. The plan
of production is based on the demand send by
State Milk Federation.

3. State Milk Federation - It is also an independent governing body that is responsible for
the marketing of the dairy products produced by DMCU.
Learning from Amul Visit

The milk collection center, VDCS of Amul are ISO 9001:2008 certified. VDCS has
maintained the detail records of its members like herd size, land size, milk volume etc.
Furthermore, they put the criteria for membership, a member must supply at least 700
liters milk for at least 180 days in a year to get voting rights. The collection center provides
veterinary services and concentrate daily based on need.

Vidya Dairy, supported by Amul provides 1-year hands-on-experience to the students of

SMC college of Dairy Science, pursing Bachelor in Dairy Technology. Apart from it, it
conducts short term external training programmes to train the workforce of dairy industry.
Mr. D.R. Shah, managing director of Vidya Dairy offered the team in providing need based
dairy related training to dairy cooperatives from Nepal.

After visiting different processing factories and

retail outlets of Amul, the team had a meeting
with senior managers of Amul on the last day
of visit. The senior management team of Amul
proposed KDDC in collaboration to produce its
‘Amul’ brand by using KDDC processing plant,
to offer quality control officer and to do
marketing in Nepal under certain
circumstances. However, the extended
discussion about the deal has been proposed
later.
Similarly, I discussed with Dr. H.K Desai, Advisor (Dairy operation, Former MD) about
Agriterra and Agripool concept. But due to a short time, he said me to contact through e-
mail and also asked to contact Mr Tek Bahadur Thapa, former MD of Dairy Development
Corporation Nepal for collaboration.

Yanamani Nepal
Business Advisor
One of the members of exchange visit team