UP plans ‘facelift’ for Parag to take on Mother Dairy, Amul

Alarmed over Amul and Mother Dairy getting a foothold in Uttar Pradesh, the Akhilesh Yadav government has decided to improve the marketing of the state's Parag dairy products and make their packaging more attractive.

This is the first time since Parag brand was launched around 30 years ago that the packaging will be redesigned.

For this purpose, the government has engaged Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow, to submit a plan to improve the marketing of UP Pradeshik Cooperative Dairy Federation Limited (UPPCDF) which makes Parag products. Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Design (NID) has been engaged to redesign the packaging of Parag products.

The Parag brand dairy products include ghee, table butter, curd, flavored milk, plain milk, toned milk, kheer, butter milk, paneer, and sweets like peda, gulab jamun, rasgulla and kalakand.

UP Agriculture Production Commissioner Alok Ranjan said that IIM-Lucknow will study the operation and marketing of UPPCDF and give its report by the end of October. He said that NID will soon start its work and suggest attractive packaging designs for Parag.

Officials said that the need for engaging these specialised institutions was felt because Gujarat-based Amul and Delhi-based Mother Dairy had captured parts of the dairy market in UP, which was dominated by Parag until a few years ago. "While Mother Dairy is dominating western UP, Amul is gaining ground in other parts of the state," said an official.

As these dairies are better organised, Parag is losing the market share day by day in small districts. UPPCDF has its collection and milk processing units in 59 districts, of whom 33 are now running in loss and four are closed. The district units which are running in profit include Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi and Meerut.

Sources said that the installed capacity of UPPCDF dairy plants is 17.40 lakh litre per day, but only 36.84 per cent of that capacity is being utilised because the availability of milk to UPPDF has reduced, said an official.

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