Jharkhand took a step towards becoming self-sufficient in milk production with the inauguration of a dairy plant at Palamu by chief minister Hemant Soren on Wednesday evening.

The “high-tech” dairy plant at Chianki in the Palamu district has a production capacity of 50,000 litres of milk per day which can be increased to 1 lakh litres per day as and when required and was built at a cost of Rs 28 crore.

Managing director of Jharkhand State Co-operative Milk Producers’ Federation (popularly referred to as Jharkhand Milk Federation- JMF), Sudhir Kumar Singh, said that this was the seventh dairy plant of the JMF and had been built by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).

JMF is a joint initiative of the Jharkhand government and the NDDB and has been selling milk and milk products under the brand name Medha Dairy since its inception in 2014.

“The state currently has a production capacity of 3.5 lakh litres of milk per day but has plans to increase the current capacity to 5 lakh litres. Once we reach the 5-lakh-litre capacity daily, we will become self-sufficient in milk production,” said Singh.

“We have already finalised talks with the NDDB for starting 50,000-litre capacity (expandable to 1 lakh) dairy plants at Jamshedpur and Giridih which will help us to achieve self-sufficiency in milk production. We are planning to start operation of the facilities in the next 18 months,” Singh added.