Mangaluru : Dakshina Kannada Cooperative Milk Union Ltd.(DKMUL) will pack and sell flavoured milk in PET bottles instead of glass bottles, shortly.

The union would spend Rs 1.2 crore for processing and packing flavoured milk in 30,000 Pet bottles (200 ml each) a day, said DKMUL president Raviraj Hegde. He was interacting with media persons on the achievements of DKMUL during 2016-17.

The union has achieved a turnover of Rs 752 crore and registered Rs 5.58 crore net profit as against Rs 659 crore and Rs 4.95 crore, respectively during the last fiscal, he said.

DKMUL had distributed 18.37 % of total profit of ₹ 4.95 crore (Rs 91.1 lakh) to dairy cooperative societies as bonus and 30.72 % of the total profit (Rs 1.523 crore) as dividend of 15 % on their share capital invested in the union last fiscal.

Mr. Hegde said that the union has almost achieved self-sufficiency in milk procurement with daily average collection of 3.86 lakh litres as against the demand of 3.29 lakh litres. It is in the top position in quality of milk collected among its counterparts in the State by deploying modern testing equipment in societies, he said.

The union sold an average 49,663 kg of curd and 1,000 litres of flavoured milk every day while it sold 100 tonnes of ghee, 47 tonnes of milk cream, five tonnes of Mysore Pak, one tonne cashew barfi, 35 tonnes paneer and four tonnes of Nandini Byte per month during 2016-17. It intends to enhance milk sales to 3.49 lakh litres and curd to 55,000 kg per day during this fiscal, Mr. Hegde added.

For expanding its capacity and network, the union has commenced construction work on a new dairy complex at Uppur in Udupi district with a capacity of 2.5 lakh litres per day at an estimated cost of Rs 95 crore. While Rs 2.5 crore would be used to deploy automation in the Mangaluru dairy, Rs 50 lakh would be spent to buy 10,000 litre pasturiser to cater to the increased demand for curd. The union would also modernise the Puttur chilling unit at a cost of Rs 1.75 crore, Mr. Hegde said.

DKMUL Managing Director B.V. Satyanarayana said that GST has impacted procurement of packing material from outside the State with increase in costs. The exact quantum would be known after a couple of months, he said and denied price hike of products.