The Dakshina Kannada District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Societies’ Union Ltd. (DKMUL) has proposed to build a mega dairy in Mangaluru, which, the Union said, is a big market for Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) products.
Addressing the press here on Monday (April 27), DKMUL president K. Raviraj Hegde said 73% of the milk and its products sold in Mangaluru and adjoining areas are from KMF. Mangaluru is a big market for the union, and the dairy at Kulashekara in the city is 30 years old. DKMUL contemplated setting up the mega dairy at the Kulashekara unit to meet the demand of the big Mangaluru market.
To ensure continuous supply of ice-cream, the union is working towards building an ice-cream refrigeration plant. The union presently has a 20-tonne cold storage facility in Mangaluru and 10-tonne cold storage facility in Udupi where ice-cream from other dairy units is stored. The union has also planned to set up a drinking water bottling plant. To address the increase in demand for paneer, the union also plans to set up a paneer plant.
Mr. Hedge said DKMUL did business worth ₹1,270 crore in 2025-26, which was 18% more than the business done in 2024-25, which amounted to ₹1,174 crore.
The average daily milk collection for the year 2025-26 was 4.07 lakh litres, 19% more than the collection in 2024-25. DKMUL continues to get an average of 40,000 litres of milk every day from other milk unions to meet the milk demand in the Mangaluru market. The union has been giving silage at ₹8.15 per kg to dairy farmers, and an average of 2,000 tonnes of silage is being purchased every month. Some farmers are using milk-yielding cattle from Erode in Tamil Nadu. This has led to an increase in production of milk, which continues to be the best in quality among the milk provided by other milk unions in the State.
