Chennai: With its exports thrust for dairy products, the country''s largest private dairy the Rs453-crore turnover Hatsun Agro Products Limited will be investing an additional Rs14.5 crore to augment is capacity and strengthening the milk procurement and processing infrastructure.

According to chairman and managing director R G Chandramogan, the company plans to set up five more chilling plants. This will take Hatsun Agro''s total to 44 chilling plants.

This fresh investment will be in addition to the Rs59.33 crore capital expenditure incurred by the company during the FY 2005 and this fiscal. "All these investment will result in our increasing our capacity by 3-lakh litres per day. The company has a current capacity to handle around 17-lakh litres per day —10-lakh litres of liquid milk and 7.5- lakh litres of value-added products."

Hatsun Agro sells around 8-lakh litres of liquid milk per day in the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Explaining the company''s export thrust, he said that the company was exporting milk ingredients — milk powder, frozen cream, unsalted ''sweet-cream'' butter, anhydrous milk fat-to 23 countries. The company''s export revenue surged forward during this fiscal to Rs59 crore. Last year the export revenue was Rs3.41 crore. Looking forward Chandramogan said that the company would soon start making UHT milk for the overseas market.

Facilitating the exports is the recent certification of Hatsun Agro''s Kanchipuram plant by the Export Inspection Agency.

The company sells liquid milk in the domestic market under three brands — Arogya, Komatha and Santhosa ice cream under the brand Arun Ice Cream, and butter and ghee brand, Komatha. Except Komatha, an acquired brand, Hatsun Agro follows the philosophy of "single-product, single-brand". Though investing sizeable sum in building the Arogya brand, Chandramogan does not find it necessary to extend the brand equity to other products like butter.