One day industry visit to Amul Cheese Plant was organized by Electronics &Communication Engineering Department, GCET for their 5th semester students as a part of teaching learning activity. The visit was planned for making observations in desired framework of the course. Due to prior communications with Amul dairy, Mr. Sudaram Public Relation officer, made special arrangements for students of GCET. Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative, based at Anand in the state of Gujarat, India formed in 1946, it is a brand managed by a cooperative body, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is jointly owned by 3.6 million milk producers in Gujarat. Amul spurred India's White Revolution, which made the country the world's largest producer of milk and milk products.In the process Amul became the largest food brand in India and has ventured into markets overseas.Dr Verghese Kurien, founder-chairman of the GCMMF for more than 30 years (1973?2006), is credited with the success of Amul.Amul -operative registered on 14 December 1946 as a response to the exploitation of marginal milk producers by traders or agents of the only existing dairy, the Polson dairy, in the small city distances to deliver milk, which often went sour in summer, to Polson. The prices of milk were arbitrarily determined. Moreover, the government had given monopoly rights to Polson to collect milk from mikka and supply it to Bombay city. Angered by the unfair trade practices, the farmers of Kaira approached Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel under the leadership of local farmer leader Tribhuvandas K. Patel. He advised them to form a cooperative and supply milk directly to the Bombay Milk Scheme instead of Polson (who did the same but gave them low prices).He sent Morarji Desai to organise the farmers. In 1946, the milk farmers of the area went on a strike which led to the setting up of the cooperative to collect and process milk.Milk collection was decentralized, as most producers were marginal farmers who could deliver, at most, 1?2 litres of milk per day. Cooperatives were formed for each village, too. The cooperative was further developed and managed by Dr.Verghese Kurien with H.M. Dalaya. Dalaya's innovation of making skim milk powder from buffalo milk (for the first time in the world) and a little later, with Kurien's help, making it on a commercial scale,led to the first modern dairy of the cooperative at Anand, which would compete against established players in the market. Kurien's brother-in-law K.M. Philip sensitized Kurien to the needs of attending to the finer points of marketing, including the creation and popularization of a brand. This led to the search for an attractive brand name. In a brainstorming session, a chemist who worked in the dairy laboratory suggested Amul, which came from the Sanskrit word amulya, which means priceless and denoted and symbolised the pride of swadeshi production.The trio's (T. K. Patel, Kurien and Dalaya's) success at the cooperative's dairy soon spread to Anand's neighbourhood in Gujarat. Within a short span, five unions in other districts "Mehsana, Banaskantha, Baroda, Sabarkantha and Surat " were set up.To combine forces and expand the market while saving on advertising and avoid competing against each other, the GCMMF, an apex marketing body of these district cooperatives, was set up in 1973. The Kaira Union, which had the brand name Amul with it since 1955, transferred it to GCMMF.In 1999, it was awarded the Best of all Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award.Adding to the success, Dr. Madan Mohan Kashyap (faculty Agricultural and Engineering Department, Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana), Dr. Bondurant (visiting faculty) and Dr Feryll (former student of Dr Verghese Kurien), visited the Amul factory at Anand as a research team headed by Dr. Bheemsen & Shivdayal Pathak (ex-director of the Sardar Patel Renewable Energy Research Institute) in the 1960s. A milk pasteurization system at the Research Centre of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) Ludhiana was then formed under the guidance of Kashyap. The technological developments at Amul have subsequently spread to other parts of India.Amul's product range includes milk powders, milk, butter,ghee, cheese,dahi, yoghurt, buttermilk, chocolate, ice cream, cream,shrikhand,paneer,gulab jamuns, flavoured milk,basundi and others. Amul PRO is a recently launched brown beverage. In January 2006, Amul launched India's first sports drink, Stamina.
