“We are in exploratory talks with IFFCO about potentially establishing a dairy farm operation in India,”Kelvin Wickham, managing director of Fonterra’s global trade unit, said today in an e-mailed statement. “However, it is early days and we do not yet have any formal agreement.”
The project may cost as much as 10 billion rupees ($225 million) and support as many as 40,000 cattle, the Economic Times reported today, citing IFFCO Managing Director U.S. Awasthi. It will initially produce 1 million liters (264,172 gallons) of milk daily, the English-language Indian paper said.
The farm’s cattle will include 3,000 cows imported from Australia and New Zealand and 10,000 local cows that will be added every year for three years, the report said.
The partners have not applied for any formal clearance for the farm, which will rely on the relaxation of a ban on the import of milk-producing animals for commercial use, the newspaper said.
Source: Bloomberg