Guwahati, Dec. 28: After putting West Assam Milk Producers' Cooperative Union Limited (Wamul) on the road to recovery, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is now taking over East Assam Milk Producers Co-operative Union Limited and Cachar Milk Union to script another success story.

Official sources said a memorandum of understanding will be signed tomorrow, on the occasion of Milk Day, by the Assam government, NDDB and the milk unions in the presence of Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and NDDB chairman T. Nanda Kumar for handing over the management of the two defunct milk unions to NDDB.

Both the milk unions are lying defunct for two decades now. Milk producers of 13 districts will benefit from the move as there are more than 20,000 milk producers in both the unions.

"The Assam government was happy after looking at the present growth and progress made by Wamul under NDDB management and hence it decided to revive the East Assam Milk Producers Co-operative Union Ltd, Jorhat and Cachar Milk Union, Silchar, so that another success story can be scripted," a senior state government official said.

Managing director of Wamul M. Thakur said the milk cooperative has made substantial progress after it was taken over by NDDB and will be netting a profit of almost Rs 5 crore in the 2015-16 fiscal. "The milk handling capacity has increased from 300 litres per day in 2008 to 50,000 litres now. The capacity of the milk processing plant has increased from 60,000 litres per day to one lakh litres per day now," said Thakur, who is demitting office on December 31.

Wamul is going to provide Rs 1 crore as additional milk price to its 4,600 producers who have been providing milk to it from March to August this year. The additional price is given by Wamul from its profits, earned during April to August this year. This will encourage rural milk producers of the state to take up dairy farming as a source of income.

An agreement was signed in April 2008 between Assam government and the NDDB for revival of Wamul after it became non functional due to various reasons. In September 2013, the tripartite agreement got extended by another five years.

At present Wamul is marketing all its products under the brand name of Purabi and supplies around 50,000 litres of freshly packed milk in a day to the markets of Guwahati as well as other important towns like Nalbari, Nagaon, Tezpur and others.

Besides milk, the union is also selling paneer, sweet curd, plain curd, cream, flavoured milk, mango lassi, ghee and other products.

Thakur said apart from two bulk milk coolers at Barpeta and Morigaon districts, it will soon be installing another cooler in the Lanka region of Hojai district.

It has also adopted renewable energy by installing solar panels in two of its milk collection centres in the Khetri area.