Milk Collection and Transportation

Milk production, in most of the countries particularly, developing countries, is confined to rural/hinterland areas; while demand for milk and dairy products is mostly urban in nature due to obvious reasons. Availability of inputs required for production of milk is cheaply and conveniently available in rural areas, whereas densely populated potential consumers are in urban areas. In addition, rural population, in general, face lot of marketing problems due to scanty and scattered nature of milk production,habitants and unavailability of proper infrastructure. Hence, milk has to be collected,transported and marketed from villages to towns/cities for better return.

The milk collection system, chosen must reflect the local conditions in terms of technical competency, cost, infrastructure and climate. Milk collection from producers through collection points is done mostly in rural areas with a large number of small suppliers and thus, eliminates a need for their own chilling and storage facilities.Collection points must comply with the same hygienic requirements as the dairies in addition to infra-structural facilities of quick transportation. In no case, milk after milking should take more than 4 hours, particularly in temperate countries, to reach to a point where it is chilled promptly to less than 4 °C.