Patna, April 17: The Bihar State Milk Cooperative Federation Ltd (Comfed), which scripted its success story with milk production in the state, is now eyeing to expand its ice cream production.

From May end, Comfed, which sells its products under the brand name Sudha, would sell ice creams in three new states - Bengal, Assam and Uttar Pradesh.

Presently, Jharkhand is the only state outside Bihar where Sudha ice creams are sold, namely at Ranchi, Bokaro and Jamshedpur.

On Monday, Sudha managing director Sudhir Kumar Singh confirmed that from May-end Sudha ice creams would be available in Guwahati (Assam), Banaras and Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh) and Siliguri (Bengal).

Sudha ice cream parlours would come up at all these places. "We have come up with separate ice cream manufacturing plants at the Patna and Biharsharif units," Singh said. "Earlier, the ice cream was manufactured at the dairy itself. But now Rs 15 crore has been spent on each of the two plants. Sudha makes 8,000kg of ice cream daily. With the new plants, we would able to make 28,000kg of ice cream daily. This would enable us not only to sell ice cream in every district in the state but also in other states."

The managing director said trial-runs of new machines at the Patna and Biharsharif plants had been successful and the machines would be operational in a day or two.

He said quality would be maintained. "We have brought imported machines. Each machine costs around Rs 2.5 crore," Singh said. " Italy is considered the best ice cream producer. We have brought machines from Italy and some European countries for our ice cream plant. Our earlier plants had both automatic and semi-automatic machines. The machines we have brought now are all automatic. We just need to put the ingredients into the machine and pillow-packed (one of the best types of packaging) ice candy would emerge from the machines. Besides, we now have a cold room where we can store 60,000kg of ice cream. Ice cream can be preserved for longer at -30º Celsius. Our cold room has been designed to store ice cream at this temperature."

That expansion of the ice-cream manufacturing units would also generate employment, claimed the officials.

"We are going to float tenders to select distributors. The distributors will also engage around 15 to 20 vendors. This way more employment will be generated," the managing director said. "The farmers will also benefit from the move, as we can procure more milk from them. Ice cream is a booming business. Demand is actually greater than milk. So, farmers would definitely benefit from the move."

Sudha is also coming out with new ice cream flavours. "Presently, we sell 28 ice cream flavours. With the commissioning of the new plants, we will add around 30 more flavours, including Kachha Aam Candy, Kala-Khatta Candy Bar, Rajbhog, New Sundae Varieties and Kaju-Anjeer among others," Singh said.