Milky Mist Dairy Food Pvt Ltd., Chittode, T.N manufactures & markets premium quality dairy products under the brand ‘Milky Mist’. Mr. Sathish Kumar.T, Managing Director, shares his viewpoints about various developments.
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Take us through Milky Mist’s journey in becoming a premium and reputed brand in the field.
The journey started in 1991 when I joined my father to assist him in the conventional milk distribution business. Couple of years down the line taking market inputs, I ventured into making paneer in a small way. Slowly the business began to grow for paneer and from 1995, we started concentrating only on paneer and expanded in stages to various value added dairy products. After understanding the Customer requirements and demands, the products and transport methodology were aligned to ensure that, the customer gets the best quality product in factory fresh state, thanks to the reefer route totally followed for both primary and secondary distribution.
Some of the products manufactured include fresh Paneer, various grades of cheese including Mozzarella & Cheddar, Fresh Cream, Butter, Ghee, Curd and Yoghurt. Today, we are the largest manufacturer of fresh paneer and cheese in south India, handling around 2.5 lakh litres milk per day and producing over 2000 tons of dairy products a month-a feat matched by few in India.
Please share details of your reefer fleet and your approach towards cold chain transport.
We are into perishable product business and if the product does not transported through the cold chain route, quality deterioration is swift. Having understood this thro’ trial and error, we have completely switched over to reefer route. We started with Hwasung and now have Thermo King Refrigeration units in all our reefers. We have 30 reefers from 3 ton pick-up to 31 ton 12 wheel trucks.
Apart from the above, we utilise insulated Stainless Steel tankers for transporting milk at 2-4 deg C from our own chilling centres. We procure milk directly from the farmers at our collection centres and transport it to chilling centres.
All the reefers are owned by us and we deliver the dairy products to our dealers through the reefers. We have data loggers and GPS fitted in all the vehicles for dynamic monitoring of vehicle movements and product temperatures.
Tell us about your dealer network and secondary distribution approach.
After having understood the dramatic improvement in product quality thro’ the reefer route in the primary distribution, we knew that all our efforts would be futile if the reefer route is not followed in the secondary distribution. Initially dealers were not willing to invest on reefer equipment and chassis and to overcome this issue, we provided the reefer equipment from our end free of cost and the dealer had to invest only on the chassis part; and as in the primary distribution, the equipment carried Milky Mist logo and product images on the sides – this has indeed become our brand ambassador on wheels.
The efforts have paid off and a dealer doing about Rs.6 lakhs per moth saw his sales zoom to Rs.60 lakhs in the same period; and we now insist that all our dealers must have reefers for deliveries to stores. We have also ensured that the cold chain remains continuous till the product is sold to customer by placing our own chillers at retail outlets free of cost.
The culmination in our dedicated reefer approach in cold chain transport from factory to fork has been in getting the adulatory messages and compliments from the satisfied consumers about the quality of our products. Once the product quality and timely service are addressed, growth will automatically happen.
Today Milky Mist dealership family has expanded to 800 members and we cover all the southern states. To penetrate the interior markets, even if the towns are located 500 to 600 km away from our factory, we deploy our own reefer. In the initial stages it will be an LCV reefer and as and when the market picks up, higher tonnage reefers will be deployed. This way we ensure that customer always gets the best quality product and we also optimise our distribution costs.
Can you share your views on reefer fleet maintenance, driver issues and going pan-India?
We have understood that a proud and satisfied driver is the key to effective transportation of our perishable products. We ensure that the reefers are maintained in top class condition and keep changing the vehicles to the upgraded version periodically. The drivers in our fold get all the benefits due to them and retention rate is high compared to market situations. We have started following 2 drivers per trip in long haul so that they get the desired rest during the trip. We believe in routine maintenance and relatively new fleet to minimise breakdown issues en route.
Tell us about your expansion plans.
We are unable expand our marketing reach today because of production constraints at our current production facility. So we are in the process of setting up a new greenfield project with state-of-the art automated machinery near Erode. Once it becomes operational, we will look at the pan-India scene.