Himachal Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur inaugurated a new Milkfed Plant Chakkar in Balh area of Mandi district which would increase its capacity to over 50,000 litres constructed at a cost of Rs 16.32 crore. He said this plant would process milk in a semi-automatic way, which would provide a facility of procurement of more milk from the farmers.
Addressing a public meeting at Chakkar, Thakur said that the HP Milkfed collected about 395 lakh liters of milk from 47,295 farmers of the State during the year 2021-22 and Rs 110.56 crore was provided to the farmers. He said that milk was one of the most important sources of income to the farmers of the State and during the tenure of the present , the purchase of milk has increased by 78 per cent, that is, from 219.00 lakh liters in the year 2017-18 to 395.39 lakh liters in the year 2021-22. The total turnover of Himachal Pradesh Milk Federation in the year 2017-18 was Rs.99 crore which has increased to Rs.172 crore in the year 2021-22, he added.
Thakur said that during the present government, an unprecedented increase of Rs.9 was made in the price of milk purchased from farmers, from Rs.22.90 per liter in the year 2017-18 to Rs.31.90 per liter in the year 2022-23. He said that the commission of milk societies was increased from 4.5 per cent to 5 percent and the Milk Federation was paying the best price to the milk producers in the country.
He said that Milkfed today has 11 Milk Processing Plants, one Cattle Feed Plant and one Powder Plant functioning in the State. With the commissioning of Milk Plant Chakkar (Mandi), the daily capacity of milk plots has increased from 100000 litres to 130000 litres. He said that another Milk Processing Plant of 50,000 litres capacity was under construction in Duttnagar, of which 70 percent work has been completed. He said that this plant would facilitate about thousands of farmers from Mandi, Kullu and other districts.