ZAHID BAIG

LAHORE: Nishat Dairy (Pvt) Limited in collaboration with SÜTA, one of the largest milk and dairy products producer from Turkey, is going to produce, market, distribute and sell premium dairy products in Pakistan.

With major focus on pasteurized milk products, we are in the phase of deciding our product profiles, which hopefully will be on shelves next year. It is a 50-50 investment partnership both by Turkish and Nishat Group, said General Manager Nishat Dairy Pvt) Limited Hustam Jalal while talking to a select group of journalists during visits to the farms.

Louis Lategan, Farm Manager Nishat Agriculture Farming (Pvt) Limited, and Chaudhary Shafquat, Administration Head, were also present on this occasion.

Two to three places have been identified to set up the manufacturing plants which can be near Lahore or adjacent to the Nishat dairy farm. He said that agreements have been finalized and we are now deciding about the machines and other equipment of the plant, which will also decide the total volume of investment which at present is roughly nearly two billion rupees, Hustam Jalal added.

He said that UHT products can also be added to the product profile but no decision has been taken yet in this regard.

Talking about the dairy farm, he said that at present there are 5700 cows in the plant out of which 2700 are producing milk while by the end of this year this number will reach 3000. He said at present these cows are giving 80,000 litres per day milk. All the animals at the farm are of Pure Holstein Friesian breed and have been imported directly from Australia and The Netherlands and now homebred. They are kept under the best available state-of-the-art facilities and are fed with the high quality feed, which helps in achieving good health conditions as well as high milk yield of the animals.

However, he said that imported dry milk is still the biggest challenge in growth of Pakistani dairy industry while dairy farms are also not finding it feasible to do business at the cost which buyers are offering. He said this is the right time that Nishat Dairy decided to enter into next phase - launching own premier products. He claimed that the Turkish group is bigger than Nestle Pakistan and its collaboration will help providing Pakistani consumers better milk products.

Hustam Jalal further said that now there are many cows which have born here and they are performing well in local climate. He said that the farm used to keep female cows and sell males. “Now we have also decided to sell these locally born foreign origin animals with more milk yield to the local farmers from next year,” he added.

Talking about manure management, Hustam said that solid part is separated from liquid and later on used as fertilizer in the agricultural farm of the group. “It is best organic fertilizer and we are also planning to introduce granular fertilizer made out of cow dung very soon,” he added.

Throwing light on energy conservation measures taken by the Nishat Dairy, he said that they have not yet thought of using bio-gas but had set up a solar park of 1 mw power on the land within the dairy farm.

It is sufficient to meet our 80 percent requirement during summer season and produce surplus during winter which is added to the national grid through net-metering system.

“Interestingly when we had applied for net-metering, GAPCO people were not aware of any such scheme and their officials had training on our system after getting approval and meter from Islamabad,” he claimed.

Journalists were also taken around the farm and shown different parts including areas of keeping animals, milking parlors, food storages etc.