Karimnagar Dairy acquires NPDD project

Karimnagar: The Karimnagar Milk Dairy has acquired the prestigious National Project for Dairy Development (NPDD) with the financial assistance of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).

Speaking to media persons at Karimnagar Dairy on Monday, TS Planning Board Vice Chairman B Vinod Kumar said that 'now sky is the limit for the Karimnagar to grow in leaps and bounds' with the JICA project. He said that the JICA would help the Karimnagar Dairy to strengthen the milk procurement institutions (MPI) such as infrastructure, milk testing machines, milk cans, automatic milk collection units, furniture and more.

On this occasion, Vinod Kumar informed the Karimnagar Dairy officials to double the number of the farmers and increase the procurement. He said that he was instrumental in sanctioning the mega dairy project worth Rs 70 crore from the Union government when he was MP of Karimnagar parliament constituency. He also said that the Karimnagar Dairy is number dairy in ensuring quality of its products.

The project was initially decided to develop the dairy sector in north-eastern states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. Again the project was extended to Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarkhand and Punjab states.

The scheme would be implemented from the financial year 2022-2023 to 2025-26 and will continue till 2027-28. In Telangana, the Karimnagar Dairy alone had bagged the project with an outlay of Rs 90.70 crore. Out of which, Rs 71.52 crore is the loan component and Rs 12.46 crore is grant and the contribution of Karimnagar Dairy is Rs 6.72 crore.The interest rate on loan is lowest of only 1.5 per cent and repayable in 10 years period from the date of release of first installment. Besides, the JICA would also assist in milk processing and value addition of milk and milk products, production of cattle feed and mineral mixture plant, setting up of automated curd making plant of 1.5 lakh litres capacity. It would also support in marketing infrastructure such as walk-in cold store, milk parlours, and of information of technology viz computerization, internet and increase of productivity of milk through fodder development.

He said that the JICA would help in ensuring the transparency in procurement operations with IT, increase of milk production with quality feed along with mineral mixture of cattle owners. The Dairy would also launch several new milk and milk products under project to increase its marketing base and benefit the farmers.

Dairy chairman Ch Rajeshwar Rao, MD P Shankar Reddy, Advisor V Hanumantha Reddy, Mayor Y Sunil Rao, Marketing manager T Rajashekhar Reddy, Directors M Prabhakar Rao, M Sudhakar Rao and A Narayana Reddy and others were also present. NDDB senior manager (finance) TT Vinayagam was instrumental in getting the project sanctioned from the Union government and NDDB.