New fresh milk factory at Linggi farm can process 30,000 litres daily — FGV

KUALA LUMPUR: FGV Holdings Bhd’s (FGV) new fresh milk factory at its Linggi dairy farm in Negeri Sembilan will have the capacity to process 30,000 litres per day.

Its group chief executive officer Datuk Haris Fadzilah Hassan said the target is consistent with the successful implementation of FGV’s fully integrated Linggi dairy farm project which has significantly increased the company’s focus in the business under the Integrated Farming sector.

In a statement today, he said FGV’s subsidiary, FGV Dairy Farm Sdn Bhd (FGVDF) recently received an additional 130 crossbred dairy heifers from Australia, which are a hybrid of Jersey and Friesian dairy cattle breeds, amounting to a total of 258 dairy herd size.

He said the shipment of cattle was to fulfil the higher volume of fresh milk production as well as the increase in local demand, especially by the hotel, restaurant and cafe market segment.

“In less than nine months since the inception of the dairy farm project in March 2020, the premium house brand ‘Bright Cow’ had been processing more than 500,000 litres of fresh milk for local consumption, contributed by the fresh milk produced by FGV’s Linggi dairy farm and supplied by external dairy farms.

“We have also installed an automated milking parlour and a cloud-based daily milk recording system to ensure the quality of our dairy products and productivity of our dairy farm,” he said.

According to him, overall upgrading work for the dairy farm is almost complete with improvements on the infrastructure, feedstock areas, milking parlour and cattle barn, while the upgrading work for a calf barn has been fully completed.

He said several new Bright Cow product formulations, flavours and packaging were also in the pipeline and undergoing product testing and stability tests prior to the launch targeted in April 2021.

“FGV’s initiatives are in line with the government’s vision for shared prosperity by offering contract farming opportunities among cattle farmers in the country,” he said.

Under the National Dairy Industry Development Programme, the government aims to ensure self-sufficiency in domestic fresh milk productions by 2025, giving an opportunity for organisations such as FGV to benefit from import substitution and become a significant industry player for locally produced fresh milk. — Bernama