The untold story of how Amul revolutionised the milk industry in India
Dr.Verghese Kurien and his brainchild Amul will forever be remembered for the impact it created on the lives of lakhs of dairy farmers, a huge chunk of them are women while transforming a milk deficient India to the largest milk producer of the world in a decade. But if one has to pinpoint one technological breakthrough that truly revolutionised India’s organized dairy industry, it is the making of milk powder out of buffalo milk — the brainchild of Dr. Kurien and H M Dalaya, his friend and an ingenious tech wizard. Mr.Dalaya who was the son of a dairy farmer himself first met Dr. Kurien at Michigan State University and they would soon be united in India. Dalaya was now a refugee, having been uprooted from his hometown of Karachi and was contemplating returning back to the US when Dr. Kurien convinced him to join the Kaira Union (soon to be renamed Amul).
One of the major reasons which plagued the dairy industry then was the excess milk produced during the winter season when the demand was quite low. The “milk commissioner” wouldn’t simply budge to their demand of taking in more milk which would in turn have been an extra income for the farmers. So the only option available was to convert it into milk powder which could be easily stored and later recombined to milk during summer when the demand peaks. But the dairy industry in India then and still today was largely fed by Buffalo milk which makes up almost 55 per cent of the total production. This milk was good for making traditional milk products like Khawa, Gulabjamun, Lassi, Dahi, Paneer but poor for making powder. The leading expert opinion across the globe was that producing powder from buffalo milk was at best unprofitable and at worst simply impossible. An expert in Dairy Science Dr. William Riddet from New Zealand, which was the largest milk producer then, too didn’t approve of the idea despite multiple consultations and proposals. So Dr. Kurien and Dalaya had to do the impossible with limited technological resources available to them.
To break it down, milk powder is made by first evaporating the water in milk to form condensed milk which is later sprayed across a large hot air chamber, where they form fine granules, to be scraped off. But buffalo milk has a higher protein content (15 per cent more) and is more viscous which creates multiple issues in the production process. The viscous nature and increased fat content would jam the nozzles of the machine while making powder. One could compensate that with a bigger nozzle hole, which would then need a higher temperature at the air chamber to evaporate the bigger milk droplets — ultimately leading to protein denaturation where the powder won’t dissolve well. On the other hand, a lower temperature would mean the powder itself won’t form at all. So it was a very narrow criterion where you could operate to make powder from buffalo milk and this was considered commercially non-viable and posed a huge technical challenge.
Mr. Dalaya built a small prototype of the powder plant with help of Larsen and Turbo and the Teddington Chemical Factory in Andheri, Mumbai. The duo was able to successfully demonstrate the production to UN officials who would then go on to fund the entire power plant using UNICEF aid funds with Mr. Dalaya being subsequently sent to Denmark to study powder plant designs and operations. These developments resulted in the Niro Atomiser, the world’s first-ever sprayer dryer designed for drying buffalo milk and installed in the Kaira dairy in October 1955. This was the reason Amul would compete successfully and well against Nestle, the leading competitor, which used cow milk to make them, and later against Glaxo for baby food. Further research in the field established Amul as a leading producer of Cheese which too was sourced from buffalo milk.
