“Summer season of 2022 will still likely be tough for dairy industry”
“With the evolution being witnessed in the 21st century, almost all industries are embracing the technological revolution and dairy industry is no exception to it. There have been many advancements in the past and going ahead, there will certainly be technologies that will further enhance the dairying ecosystem of the country.
In 2022, we anticipate enhanced technological intervention across the entire value chain. At the procurement level, there will be greater usage of health tracking of cattle by way of using GPS enabled chips. In terms of processing, manufacturing and logistics, we expect technologies like membrane filtration to concentrate milk to reduce water usage and go towards water neutrality and AI based monitoring of storage conditions of milk and milk products during transport to play a vital role within the industry, coupled with advanced supply chain technology for more cost-effective cold chain warehouses, phase changing material (PCM) pads, temperature controlled cold chain packing, etc. Even at the packaging level, there may come technologies in order to make packaging of milk and milk products more environment friendly. Whereas on the product front, in 2022, enhanced technologies will help in delivering better immunity benefits to consumers (for e.g., probiotics) in addition to digestive benefits and high protein delivery in different dairy products. Additionally, product traceability through blockchain technology is also expected to grow leaps going ahead.
Going ahead, we at Mother Dairy, are focused towards achieving a CAGR of around 15 per cent, thereby enabling us to nearly double our turnover from the current, by the fiscal of 2024-2025. The targeted growth will be led by our dairy business and amongst the non-dairy business we foresee a significant contribution from our edible oil portfolio by the said period. We will be working towards expanding our operations across major states such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar from the current Delhi
NCR operations. We are also exploring avenues to enhance manufacturing capacities for some of the focus product categories. Within our dairy products portfolio, we plan to tap into new and evolving consumption occasions to entice consumption round the year, rather than offering a summer centric portfolio. Our efforts will be aligned with an intention of having a national footprint in the next couple of years.
The challenges within the dairy sector are very dynamic in nature. For e.g., the inflationary pressure in prices of various commodities impacts various cost-heads such as logistics, packaging materials, etc. Also, since most of the dairy products are temperature sensitive, robust and contemporary infrastructure is a must-have for the overall sector. Many-a-times, such infrastructural issue result in a longer transit time which may impact the quality of both raw produce and final product. Hence, it is imperative to keep upping the ante on the desired infrastructure.
Of late, disruption caused by two waves of the ongoing pandemic have severally impacted the institutional & bulk demand and also the consumer demand in a number of markets.
With such challenges, the demand recovery is likely to be slow and more time may be taken for recovery. Continuous disruption during summer seasons of last two years has also adversely affected the animal productivity due to sub-optimal feeding and has also caused disruption in animal health and breeding activities. Therefore, overall milk production and the milk availability may be hampered in the coming winter. If things remain normal, the summer season of 2022 will still likely be tough for the Indian dairy industry with impact on overall milk production and prices.