New Delhi, September 28, 2024: French dairy company Danone on Friday announced to expand operations in Punjab by investing 20 billion Euros (equivalent to ₹200 crore). The company uses milk as a basic ingredient for its products at a plant in Lalru in Punjab.
“Our focus is to increase dairy farmer base and increase milk production,” said company’s chief operations officer Vikram Agarwal. “Also, we are increasing farmers’ base and also supporting farmers attached with Danone family to increase milk production,” he said.
According to the company’s chief executive officer Antoine de Saint Affrique the expansion plan will be spread over three years which also involves increasing dairy farmers’ income by 25%. He informed that apart from the milk procurement company also focuses on livestock health, manure management and community engagement.
The company collects milk from 100 villages and has 17 chilling centres.It has been running operations in India for past 30 years and procures 30,000 litres of milk every day from 5,000 farmers in Punjab with a total of 1 lakh tonnes annually according to the reports published in hindustantimes.com.
Normally in this part of the country, average cow and buffalo give 10 to 15kg milk unlike Europe and North American countries where milch animals give up to 45kg milk, our efforts are to increase milk production to 15 to 20kg, said Agarwal informing that Donone is working to double per animal milk production.
