Sambalpur, May 25: Dairy farmers of the region are upbeat over the Odisha State Co-operative Milk Producers' Federation's (Omfed) decision to double the milk processing capacity of its Goshala plant.

Omfed will expand the plant's milk processing capacity from 50,000 litres to one lakh litres a day.

"The dairy farmers of this region are producing more than one lakh litres of milk. However, as the plant did not have the capacity to process that much milk, Omfed used to refuse to procure all the produce. But, more milk will be procured from the dairy farmers after the plant is expanded. Thousands of farmers will be benefited from this move," said a dairy farmer, Ananda Nag.

The Omfed plant at Goshala is located on six acres along the National Highway No. 6.

"The existing plant, which produces 50,000 litres milk a day, is spread over around two acres. Expansion of the plant is going on the remaining four acres. Construction of the expanded area is almost over. Machineries have also been procured and the Odisha State Pollution Control Board has given approval for the expansion," said Sambalpur Omfed general manager Kishor Nayak.

The expanded plant will start working by April next year.

At present, around 80,000 litres of milk is collected from the dairy farmers every day from 440 milk producers' societies across the region. While 50,000 litres of milk is processed here at the Goshala plant, 30,000 litres of milk is sent to Rourkela for processing.

"The dairy farmers of the region will be benefited after expansion of the plant at Goshala is over. More milk will be procured from the farmers," said Nayak.

"Work on setting up of an ice cream plant is also going on at Goshala. We hope that the ice cream plant will also be functional within one year," he said.

The ice cream plant, which is being set up under the Rastriya Krishi Vikash Yojna of the Union government, will produce 3,000 litres of ice cream every day.