Reinventing Aavin

Venkatachari Jagannathan
27 August 2004

Aavin — the Tamil Nadu Co-opertive Milk Producers' Federation brand - has successfully repositioned and established itself with innovative marketing steps and the customer friendly measures

It is hop, stop and jump for the Tamil Nadu Co-opertive Milk Producers' Federation, better known by its brand name Aavin.

Not long ago Aavin strove hard to satisfy Tamil Nadu's demand for milk. But today it sells milk and milk powder and other products to many dairies and institutions in the country.

Aavin supplies 30,000 litres per day (lpd) of concentrated milk, equivalent to two lakh lpd of normal milk and 6,000 tonne of milk powder to Mother Dairy, New Delhi. The other dairies that source milk powder from Aavin are Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS), Mother Dairy, Kolkata, and the milk federations of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. Shortly, Aavin will be doubling its sales to Kerala from the present levels of one lakh lpd.

Aavin's products (milk powder, ghee, milk in tetra packs and others) go to places like Tripura, Assam, Rajasthan, Andaman and Lakshadweep. The federation is also toying with an idea of exporting milk powder to Malaysia, Singapore, Middle East, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Nadu government's three tiers milk business comprises the primary cooperative societies at the village level where the farmers bring in their milk in the first tier. The surplus milk, after meeting the local markets, is sent to the next tier — the district level cooperative milk producer's union.