Milkfed to rejig its resources

Amit Agnihotri / TNN / Nov 5, 2006, 01:58 IST

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The Punjab Milkfed is all set to do a financial rejig in its fortunes.

CHANDIGARH: Worried over the underutilisation of its plant capacity coupled with overstaffing and mounting losses, the Punjab Milkfed is all set to do a financial rejig in its fortunes.
Out of the 12 milk processing plants of the Federation in Punjab, only two one in Ropar and Ludhiana each have shown profit in the first half of the current financial year.All others have been registering losses.
According to the profit and loss position of the Federation's milk unions in 12 districts till September 2006, the total losses decreased from Rs 8.6 cr in 2005-06 to Rs 6.4 cr this year.
The Ropar and Ludhiana unions showed improvement in profit. While profit of Ropar union went up from Rs 1.71 cr in 2005-06 to Rs 2.01 cr till September this year, that of Ludhiana union increased from Rs 1.78 cr in 2005-06 to Rs 2.65 cr this year.

The worst performers were the unions in Gurdaspur where the losses went up from Rs 1.46 cr in the last financial year to Rs 2.06 cr this year, and Bhatinda where the losses increased from Rs 1.48 cr in 2005-06 to Rs 1.75 cr this year.
The only consoling factor for the authorities is that some of them have begun to show a reduction in losses. Sources said majority of the plants continue to be in the red owing to underutlisation of capacity, overstaffing and high operational cost.

MD Milkfed, Punjab, VK Singh told TOI: "We are gambling by paying high prices to the farmers to ensure better procurement of milk, which will ensure capacity utilisation.
Market realisation of our products is good and should yield profits." Singh said to tackle the problem of overstaffing, a VRS scheme is in the offing for both Federation and unions staff.
"These steps will probably improve our financial viability. We expect the plants in Patiala and Jalandhar to come out of the red by March 2007. But we will need specific efforts for the ones in Bhatinda, Sangrur and Gurdaspur, which have been an area of concern," he added.

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