“Amul, The Taste Of INDIA” it is something that is stuck in the mind of all Indians and we can’t stop ourselves from singing the jingle.On 23rd of September, we the students of BBA Global Business headed towards India’s most famous dairy brand’s factory located in Fulbari ,Siliguri, West Bengal. As we reached the destination, we met the officials and the supervisor of the factory who guided us through.
The first question which came to our minds after seeing the huge storage was the amount of production. They informed that it was about 1,20,000 litre per day. The company ensures pure quality of milk by collecting the milk directly from the producer. More than 200 tests are carried out by professionals to ensure that the milk is above the margin quality (cow’s milk minimum 3.5% of fat and 8.5% of SNF Solid Net Fat ) and does not have any harmful chemicals.
The process starts with chilling the milk at 4 degree celsius in 3 containers or silos of about 20,000-50,000 litres. The silo uses the principle of equilibrium to chill the milk. Then the milk is further carried to pasteuriser which heats the milk to 80 degree Celsius and then cools it to 4 degree Celsius simultaneously at the rate of about 5000 litre/hour. The milk further goes into the homogeniser which breaks the bigger fat molecules and makes it uniform and relatively very small in size.
The milk gets ready for packaging with the help of huge machines which carries out this process at the rate of 65 packets/min. The packets are then kept in cold storage with the temperature of 4 degree. Well, in the case of favourite dahi, the process is quite different. The homogenised milk is carried to another container where the temperature is first increased to 90 degree Celsius and then brought to 40 degree Celsius. In this process, special culture of lactobacillus bacteria which is imported from Denmark is added. The tiny packs of culture cost about 5000 rupees per packet. Finally the dahi is packed at the rate of 45 pouch/min at room temperature and further stored to chill at 1 degree Celsius. After the tour of the factory we were taken upstairs for the audio visual session where the history of the emergence of the co-operative was explained. The audio visual presentation not only cleared our vision of the inception of a company as big as Amul but also the aspiration of the thousands of farmers back then to get British raj free dairy of their own.
The birthdate of the founder of Amul, Sir Verghese Kurien ,which falls on 26th of November is celebrated as Milk day across the country. Be it on any occasion, in any religion, any house , Amul serves as the taste of India. The company is now not only an India-based company but also works at global level now with more than 50 branches all over the world.Finally, after the session ended we all gathered for the official group photo, expressed our gratitude towards the officials and set off back to our college. Overall , the visit proved to be very interesting and enriching. The trust we had as kids on the brand amul has strengthened more.
