Plans underway to grow milk production in Sri Lanka
Although there are around 250,000 – 300,000 farmers engaged in milk production in the country, they do not have a market place to sell their produce.
“However we have found a market for those 15,000 farmers who work with us to sell their milk produce to us,” said the Chief Operating Officer of Cargills Quality Dairies (Pvt) Ltd Saranga Wijesundera at a media briefing held at the Taj Samdra Hotel in Colombo this week.
He said the ultimate aim of the company is to make Sri Lanka self-sufficient in milk to alleviate malnutrition in the country. The Cargills Dairy Centre that commenced operations by acquiring a closed down ice cream plant converted it into a liquid milk producing plant in 2002. By 2016-2017 period, the milk collected by the centre rose up to 80,000-90,000 litres daily from local farmers.
Cargills Quality Dairies (Pvt) Ltd established in 2017 in the Kotmale area produces a range of milk products such as fresh and flavoured milk, ice cream, set and drinking yoghurt, cheese, curd and fresh cream. The company is the largest manufacturer of dairy products in Sri Lanka.
Around 50 million litres of locally produced milk has been collected last year by the Kotmale Dairies, owned by the company which is a subsidiary of Cargills Group Ltd.
Cargill’s Group General Manager, Nimal Guneratne said the company today collects around 150,000 litres of milk daily from 15,000 farmers who work with them. He said instead of using powdered milk, local milk is utilised to produce a range of ice creams to international standard. Their latest products to hit the market include Kotmale butter and Kotmale cheddar cheese. Cargills Director Sales, Buddhisha Herath said a state of the art factory has been built by Cargills in the Gampaha area to produce quality milk and other milk based products. He said the country incurs a loss of Rs. 278 million annually to import milk power and other related milk based products.