JOIN USThe Dakshina Kannada Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited (DKMUL) is planning to install 125-kV capacity solar panels in its premises at Kulshekar, said DKMUL president Raviraj Hegde.
In an informal chat with mediapersons on the sidelines of the World Milk Day programme by the DKMUL at SDM Mangalajyothi Integrated School at Vamanjoor on Wednesday, he said that a budget of Rs two crore is earmarked for the purpose. “We are visiting a few solar units in Bengaluru, to look into its benefit,” he added.
DKMUL managing director Dr Sathyanarayana K V said, “As the DKMUL is using heavy machinery for the processing of milk and milk products, the power consumption is high. The solar unit may not cover the whole set-up, but we have planned to tap solar energy to fully operate the flexipack unit without depending upon the grid power by March next year.”
The sanctioned power capacity to the DKMUL is 1,250 kV and, on an average, the actual requirement is 750 kV, he said. “Solar energy units have seen a lot of advancement in the recent past. We are looking at a few models before finalising the one,” he added.
Milk in flexipack
The Trupti milk of the DKMUL, which has a shelf life of 90 days without refrigeration, will be made available for consumers after a week. The DKMUL had launched the milk in flexipack on April 5. However, the milk in flexipack was in incubation for observation purpose.
The DKMUL is the first milk union in the state to have a state-of-the-art flexipack unit and to supply milk in flexipacks. The flexipack plant has the capacity of producing 60,000 litres of ‘Trupti’ milk packets per day.
Under the cloud-based ERP (enterprise resource planning) technology, second module of the application is under progress.
The second module will deal with milk procurement, under which, details of milk collected at each point in the district will be automatically updated. Even the farmers will get the details of the payment made for the milk supplied to the societies.
Speaking earlier, Hegde said, “Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has declared milk as a global food and milk is a complete food. About 3.97 lakh to 4 lakh litre milk is procured from 1.20 lakh members of the milk societies in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts.”
He said that with the consumption of junk food, children suffer from obesity at a young age. The children of SDM Mangalajyothi Integrated School were given flavoured milk and sweets on the occasion.