May 28, 2013

Dutch Mill collaborates with Thai government on milk quality improvement
 

Dutch Mill Group, one of Thailand's leading dairy manufacturers and distributors, is partnering with the Agriculture Ministry to supply milk from the firm's contracted farms.

Under a memorandum of understanding signed on May 23, both parties will maximise their efforts to enhance dairy production efficiency across the system, from upstream to downstream processes.

The new agreement with the Agriculture Ministry attempts to bring Dutch Mill's dairies up to international quality standards. The company will ensure milk collection centres have quality inspections at least four times a month, send teams to support farmers and involve staff in the development of collection centres.

The group will also offer higher buy-in prices for raw milk that achieves quality standards. Farmers currently receive THB19 (US$0.63) per kilogramme.

Dutch Mill's vice president Pornchai Sawadsuksobchai said the agreement included implementation of a pilot project for the contracted 3,587 dairy farms that supply raw milk to the group.

The programme will help dairy farmers to achieve international quality standards and increase raw milk output to 15 kilogrammes per cow per day within three years, he said. The industry average is 13 kilogrammes.

Chavalit Chookachorn, deputy agriculture permanent secretary, says the Livestock Development Department will provide expert advice and training in forage and dairy herd management and send mobile units to support farmers, provide expert advice and training to help farms to achieve the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification.

The Dairy Farming Promotion Organization of Thailand will conduct training courses for new dairy farmers and advanced training courses for existing ones, while the Cooperative Promotion Department will give financial support for dairy cooperatives to upgrade their operations to meet GAP standard.

The scheme, which runs until the end of 2015, is aimed at having all 18 milk collection centres achieve the Good Manufacturing Practice standard while enabling at least 70% of all contracted farms to meet the GAP standard.

Pornchai says the efforts will help Dutch Mill become one of the leading dairy production and marketing firms in ASEAN.

The collaboration is aimed at improving the competitiveness of the dairy industry ahead of the ASEAN Economic Community's launch in 2016.