Centre’s justification of Amul’s TN entry draws Aavin’s ire
The Home Ministry’s reply is based on technicalities which hides the real facts, Aavin sources claimed on Friday.
Representative image
VELLORE: Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers Federation Limited has taken a strong exception to the Central Home Ministry’s reply to CM MK Stalin’s letter to stop Amul from poaching in Aavin’s territory, sources said. The Home Ministry’s reply is based on technicalities which hides the real facts, Aavin sources claimed on Friday.
The Home Ministry’s letter states that Amul procures milk at the same rate offered by Aavin, the brand owned by the state cooperative milk society. “However, what is not revealed is that Aavin follows the Richmond formula to calculate solid and solid nonfat content in milk and thus offers Rs 34 procurement price based on 4.2 fat and 8.3 SNF content totaling 12.5,” sources told DT Next.
On the contrary, Amul follows the ISO formula which under testing reveals solid as 4.3 and SNF as 8.5 totaling 12.8 which thus allows them to pay around Rs.1 to Rs.1.50 more per litre to farmers” sources added.
The centre had also contended that milk was not being procured (by Aavin) from farmers attached to its societies. Tamil Nadu has a total of 43,000 societies with around 4.5 crore members. However, active members are around 40 lakh, sources revealed. “The response is based on the fact that farmers who do not supply milk to Aavin for three years are considered inactive. But those names are not removed from the society’s rolls. Amul has approached such persons to procure milk from them” sources pointed out.
The third point stated in the reply was that Amul was not a competitor to Aavin. “On the face of it may appear right. But if you look deeper it will show that out of the 1.25 crore litres of milk procured daily, Aavin’s share is around 35 lakh litres. Farmers use another 5 lakh litres for their own use. It is the remaining 85 odd lakh litres which is procured by the 42 private dairies/agents functioning in the state,” the source said.
All private dairies follow flexible pricing that is the reason why recently when the price of milk powder and butter plummeted, private players reduced prices as they offer reduced prices after purchasing the product. This apparently led to fears among farmers that the reduction might continue for some more time, forcing them to switch over to Aavin resulting in daily milk procurement going up by 5 lakh litres to touch 35 lakh litres, recently, sources added.
