Summer of 2010: Katraj Dairy's multi-flavoured ice creams

Fri, Nov 6 05:38 AM

National Dairy Development Board to support Rs 40-lakh project

Come next summer and Puneites will be able to savour the delights of a new flavour of ice cream. Pune Zilha Sahakari Dudh Utpadak Sangh Maryadit, popularly known as Katraj Dairy, that had announced its plans to come out with multi-flavoured ice creams last year, has now declared that it will be ready with the product in the summer of 2010.

Katraj Dairy has tied up with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) for technical and financial support for the venture.

Katraj co-operative has now floated a tender for installing required machinery for the production of ice creams at its plant. The investment for this particular set up of ice cream production is Rs 40 lakh, while the total makeover and development plans of Katraj amount to approximately Rs 3 crore.

"It was just last year that we decided to venture into large-scale ice cream production. There are hardly any milk co-operatives in Maharashtra that have tried to manufacture ice creams so far. We had forwarded a proposal to NDDB for its approval and have obtained that now. Besides this, NDDB is going to support us with its technical knowhow as well as funding," said Katraj MD Vivek Kshirsagar.

With a steady growth since its inception in 1960, Katraj Dairy today has a milk collection of over 3.25 lakh litres per day with a financial turnover of over Rs 150 crore. The dairy also sells a variety of milk by-products like ghee, shrikhand, curd, malai paneer, cream and even softy ice cream at its two parlours located at Katraj and Bundgarden.

Ice cream mix is prepared at the plant and later converted into softy ice creams available in three flavours—mango, vanilla and chocolate. However, the softy operation is done on a very small scale.

"The ice cream venture is a major one with a capital investment of Rs 40 lakh. We need various machinery items, including freezer, packaging material, homogeniser and cold storage among other things. It will take a couple of months to set all this up. Hence, we can say that we would be able to roll out the range of ice-creams by coming summer," Kshirsagar said.

Abhijit Bhattacharjee, spokesperson of NDDB, confirmed that it was going to support Katraj with technical expertise in the field. "Katraj plans to launch a publicity drive to promote their new product," chairman of Katraj Ramesh Bhujbal added.

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