DHAKA: An agreement between Tetra Pak, PRAN, UNIDO and the Department of Livestock Services for the joint development project “Sustainable smallholder farmers’ milk production” was signed.

The deal signing ceremony was held at a hotel in the capital on November 24.

The project is a public-private collaboration financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), PRAN and Tetra Pak.

Under the supervision of UNIDO, the project aims to scale up the concept of local dairy hubs initiated by PRAN in Bangladesh. A dairy hub is a network of small Village Milk Collection Centres serving small-holder farmers in 20-30 villages and a central Mother Plant to which all milk is transported and then further delivered to a processing factory.

Through the hub system, the smallholder famers gain direct access to Bangladesh’s national milk market and the farmer is guaranteed a fair price for the milk. Except for collecting milk, the centres also provide training, advice and other related veterinary services to the farmers free of cost.

Through the project, two already existing dairy hubs will be optimised and three new hubs will be established. Each hub is expected to reach about 3,000 dairy farmers and bring about an increase of their income by at least 50 percent by increasing milk production, as stated by Anisur Rahman, Chief Operating Officer of PRAN Dairy.

It will benefit about 20 thousand farmers, many of them women. Presently PRAN has two dairy hubs located in Chatmohor and Gurudaspur of Pabna district, he added.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Swedish Ambassador to Bangladesh, Ms Anneli Lindahl Kenny, expressed her appreciation that public and private actors in this way can combine funding as well as expertise to reach common goals of development and poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.

Ahsan Khan Chowdhury, Deputy Managing Director of PRAN-RFL Group and Musaddique Hossain, Director General and CVO of Department of Livestock Services signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations.

Zaki Uz-Zaman, head of UNIDO operations in Bangladesh; Sabir Mridha, Key account Manager of Tetra Pak and other officials from SIDA, UNIDO, PRAN and Department of Livestock Services were also present on the occasion.

BDST: 1935 HRS, NOV 26, 2013