Banas Dairy will ship the first export consignment of Amul frozen french-fries produced at its newly-commissioned potato processing plant in Banaskantha district next month.

The frozen french-fries are manufactured at the Banaskantha District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (Banas Dairy)'s potato processing plant located at Sanadar village in Diyodar taluka of the district, while it will be marketed by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Limited (GCMMF) under the Amul brand.

The plant’s first shipment will be to Philippines next month. The dairy has also received export orders from Malaysia, Japan, US, Canada and several European nations, including Netherlands and Ireland among others. The shipments will happen through Mundra port in Gujarat, officials informed.

"This will be the first consignment of potato products to be exported from the newly-commissioned potato processing plant. The shipment will leave next month. We have an order for 120 tonnes of french-fries," said Sangram Chaudhary, Managing Director, Banas Dairy.

Notably, the ₹140-crore plant having an installed capacity to process 48 tonnes of potato per day, was inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April this year. Earlier, the dairy relied on the third-party manufacturers for potato products and a small quantity was exported to Canada, Singapore and Malaysia earlier.

This is the first export consignment from the dairy's own plant.

Besides french-fries, the potato processing plant makes frozen potato chips, aloo tikki, burger patty, potato wedges etc.

The Deesa region in the district is considered potato hotbed with heavy concentration of growers. “There were sharp fluctuations in potato prices every year affecting many farmers. As a solution, we’ve decided to do value addition . We are executing forward contracts with farmers thereby securing their price and we get our desired quality of potato,” said Chaudhary.

This year, the dairy has procured about 10,000 tonnes of potato under the contractual agreement with farmers in the region. With sharp demand for potato products, the dairy is running short in supplies. "Next year we are planning to procure about 25,000 tonnes of potato," said Chaudhary adding that there were about 3,200 farmers connected with the dairy under potato cultivation agreement.

The dairy encourages santana variety for cultivation by distributing seeds sourced from agro-products major ITC under the long-term agreement.

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