Mother Dairy, a wholly owned subsidiary of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), on Tuesday hiked mil prices in Delhi-NCR region by Rs 2/ litre, citing a rise in input costs.
This is the fifth round of increase in milk prices this year announced by the firm, a leading milk supplier in Delhi-NCR.
Mother Dairy and Gujarat Cooperative Milk Market Federation popularly (AMUL) supply around 3 million litres of milk per day each to Delhi and NCR region.
Mother Dairy has increased the prices of full-cream milk by Rs 2 to Rs 66/litre, while the toned milk rate has been revised to Rs 53/litre from Rs 51/litre. Double-toned milk rate has been increased to Rs 47/litre from Rs 45/litre.
Stating that the current year for the dairy industry has been ‘unprecedented’, Mother Dairy said in a statement: “We have been witnessing a significant increase in demand for milk and milk products from both consumers and institutions, even after festivals. On the other hand, procurement of raw milk has also not picked up after Diwali as was anticipated,”.
The procurement prices of raw milk have gone up by about 24% over the last year due to higher input costs and heat wave conditions, it stated.
In a recent interview to FE, Meenesh C Shah, Chairman, NDDB has said that retail prices of packaged milk supplied by the dairy cooperatives and Mother Dairy could see another round of hike, owing to the rise in costs of feed and other inputs. “As we have to hike procurement prices of milk from farmers, there could be one more round of increase in prices by cooperatives,” Shah had said.
Last month, Mother Dairy, had announced a hike in prices of full cream milk by Rs 1 per litre and token milk (bulk vended milk) by Rs 2/ litre in Delhi-NCR, citing increase in feed costs.
According to Shah, in the last one year fodder and feed costs have increased by 25% and there was some drop in milk production in few pockets because of the spread of lumpy skin disease (LSD) amongst livestock population.
Milk inflation in November was at 8.16%. Prices have been rising since February, when they rose by 3.81% on year.
Shah had said that fodder prices have stabilised and with the setting in of ‘flush’ season when milk production goes up, prices are unlikely to firm up further after the next round of hike. The feed costs constitute about 75%-80% of the cost of production of milk, Shah said.
Dairy cooperatives, which have a major share in the liquid milk market, have hiked prices of packaged milk in the last one year citing rise in cost of production leading to higher procurement prices paid to farmers. Dairy cooperatives claim that 75%-85% of each consumer rupee realised from selling milk and products goes back to the farmers.