--By Shruti Sonthalia

 

‘ Rahul’ - Pure Taste of Nepal, is a powder milk brand promoted by the Chitawon Coe Group known for infrastructure development and construction business. After the successful venture of the Manakamana Cable Cars, the group has started another pioneering project - Chitawon Milk Limited - which is the only private company in Nepal to produce powdered milk - others in the market being imported products. 

 

Rahul has hit the markets with the tagline ‘Har Din Har Pal’, giving the dairy product a sense of being a basic necessity in daily life. Senior manager for sales and marketing Sanjit Kumar Rajbhandari says that the major challenge for the brand is the unavailability or scarcity of raw milk as the company has not been able to reach good capacity utilization. 

 

Factory at Chitwan, has 150 workers using fully-automatic machines. The factory has a processing capacity of 150,000 litres of milk and an output rate of 15 tonnes of milk powder per day. The factory uses German technology such as the Alpha Laval machinery and the NIRO-GEA, a multi stage spray-drying technology. The in-house lab of the factory is equipped with high-tech facilities such as Milk-San from FOSS-Denmark, a company that produces analytical instruments for quality control. 

 

Other products by Rahul apart from powder milk include ghee, skim milk powder (SMP) and dairy whitener. Since all products use milk as their basic ingredient, productivity varies given its scarcity in Nepal. Rahul, however, targets to produce 50 tonnes of ghee every month. 

 

For marketing, Rahul uses print as well as electronic media. “We also participate in events, especially family and housewife targeted events, “says Rajbhandari. The company is seen to sponsor events during the Teej festival. 

 

The products are distributed in all 75 districts in Nepal with the help of 50 dealers. The products also reach the inaccessible regions, like Solukhumbu and Jumla, through air lifting. The SMP product has been exported to Pakistan since the last two years on a regular basis. The company owns 50 percent of market segment for dairy whiteners used for tea and coffee and it sells 600 tonnes of dairy whitener according to Rajbhandari. Additionally, the consumer pack of SMP for health-conscious people is the company’s new product in the pipeline. 

 

The senior manager, explains about the two seasons of raw milk i.e. lean and flush. In lean season there is less availability of raw milk and in flush season there is excess milk supply from farmers.Because of this powder plant, milk holiday problem was solved in the country. To counter the problem of scarcity, Chitawon Milk Limited helps farmers by providing nutritious cattle feed, grass, and free health services for the cattle so that it leads to an increased production of milk.