Verka — From Amritsar suburb to big brand
Outside Amritsar, majority people consider Verka as a brand of milk and other dairy products being run by Milkfed. Not many know that the brand got its name from a suburb of Amritsar – Verka.
A brainchild of visionary Chief minister Partap Singh Kairon, who was instrumental in setting up north India’s first milk plant and second in the country after Anand in Gujarat, the facility became functional on March 23, 1963.
It was started from machinery gifted by a US firm and financed by the Union Government. Milkfed has under its jurisdiction nine milk plants, including the one at Verka.
From a humble beginning with a processing capacity of 60,000 litres of milk per day, it was enhanced to 1 lakh litres in 1998 and its present capacity is 1.30 lakh litres daily. In the last eight years, the sale of products at Verka has doubled. Verka is selling 1.30 lakh litres pouched milk, 23,000 kg curd, 40,000 litres lassi, 500 kg cheese and 500 kg kheer per day.
Twenty-five products under the Verka brand are available in the market ranging from pasteurised milk, ghee, milk powder, sweetened milk in glass bottles, sweetened and salty lassi, ice-cream, milk cake, curd, paneer, kheer and the popular kesar-badam kulfi. Verka also makes ‘panjeeri’ for the anganwadis in the state, which is supplied through the Social Welfare Department. Sweets are specially made and sold by Verka during the Diwali season.
The milk is supplied to the plant by dairy owners through registered cooperative societies spread across Amritsar, Tarn Taran and parts of Gurdaspur district.
During its 62-year-old journey the milk plant touched a golden milestone in 2020 when its semi-automatic facility became fully automatic. Its daily milk processing capacity went up from 1.7 lakh litres to 2.5 lakh litres per day, which can be stretched to 5 lakh litres with an investment of Rs 55 crore.
Recently, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann laid the foundation stone for the expansion of the Verka milk plant. A unit with investment of Rs 135 crore would come up for the production of fermented foods, including flavoured milk and curd. The CM also unveiled a mascot— ‘Veera’ — depicting a young Sikh boy, sporting a blue ‘patka’ with a T-shirt, extending greetings with folded hands.
Harminder Singh Sandhu, manager, Verka, said: “Milk is produced at hundreds of dairy farms located across villages. However, its major demand is in urban locations where majority of consumers are concentrated. To meet the urban demand, milk is collected from rural farms and transported under chilled conditions to processing plants where it is processed, packaged and dispatched to retail outlets and superstores for consumers.
Punjab