What it has taken to build India's most state-of-the-art Ice Cream Plant

Govindpur Thanda (Telangana).
Normal “toned” milk contains 11.5% total solids: 3% fat and 8.5% SNF or solids-not-fat, while it is 15% (6% fat and 9% SNF) for full-cream milk. The total milk solids are even higher, at 21% (10% fat and 11% SNF) for real ice-cream.

That makes ice-cream nothing but concentrated milk, which children don’t have to be forced to drink! Nor should it surprise that the country’s biggest makers of “real” ice-cream – which use milk fat, as opposed to vegetable oils in frozen desserts – are basically dairy companies. Ice-cream is the most value-added, and probably the tastiest, milk product.

Hatsun Agro Product Limited plant situated at Govindpur Thanda, Telangana’s Sangareddy district

Hatsun Agro Product Limited (HAP), India’s largest private sector dairy company, has established the country's most state-of-the-art ice cream plant with a production capacity of two  lakh litres per day. The plant, with a total investment of Rs 600 crore, has come up at Govindpur Thanda village in Zaheerabad taluka of Telangana’s Sangareddy district. HAP, which recorded sale revenues of Rs 7,246.97 crore in the year ended March 31, 2024, has two other ice-cream plants, both in Tamil Nadu, at Karumapuram (in Salem district) and Nallur (near Chennai) with respective production capacities of 90,000 litres and 40,000 litres per day. “This is not only our biggest, but also the technologically most-advanced ice cream factory,” R.G. Chandramogan, chairman of HAP, tells Rural World. The plant, which is build on 20 acres of a 119-acre complex that has lot of green space (including a 30-acre mango orchard and 5-acre sugarcane field), is highly automated:

“In our Salem plant, we have 900 employees producing 90,000 litres of ice-cream per day. This plant has just 500 people producing 2 lakh litre per day,” points out the 74-year old Chandramogan, whose first factory, set up in 1970 at a 125 sq ft space in Chennai’s Royapuram area, had a five-litre batch freezer that could churn out a mere 10,000 ice candies per day.
HAP is today India’s second largest ice cream manufacturer – after Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (“Amul”) – with its popular “Arun” and premium “Ibaco” brands being marketed across South India, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and West Bengal.  

R.G. Chandramogan, Chairman, Hatsun Agro Product Limited

HAP's new plant is India's most automated, with much of the production and even packing done through machines and robotic arms. Human touch is limited to only supervision or placing the packed ice cream boxes in baskets before they reach the cold store. The machines, connected by long conveyor belts, would make it feel like looking at the floor of a big steel plant. The raw materials – from milk powder, butter and anhydrous fat to cocoa, flavours, sugar, emulsifiers and stabilisers – are kept in stores at low temperatures. 

The process of pasteurization, homogenization, ageing is automated.After this, ice cream is produced at a temperature of minus five degrees. Talking about speed, a machine produces 43 thousand pieces per hour of a product worth five rupees. Another machine making 12 thousand cups is also working there. All this work is done automatically. After the ice cream is made, it is sent to the freezing tunnel, where its temperature is reduced. After which various products go to the cold store through conveyor belts.

Conveyor belt at Hatsun Agro plant 

HAP Chairman Chandramogan says that an ice cream cone making machine has been installed in this plant of the company. The sales of ice cream cones are increasing rapidly and we are producing cones in our own plant to improve the quality of cones. Ice cream cone products are being prepared by producing cones in this plant and filling them with ice cream right here. In this plant, cones will be produced at the rate of 15 thousand cones per hour. For this a cone baking machine is being installed. This plant has a filling capacity of 27 thousand per hour.
He tells Rural World that this is a world class factory with the latest technology and machinery in India of its kind. This plant can produce a large range of ice cream products and in sizable volume. This plant has the capacity to produce two lakh litre of ice cream per day.  Machinery for ice cream is from GRAM Equipment, a Denmark company and cone baking machinery is from Walter, a German company. 

Chandramogan believes that the government should treat ice cream as a milk product for the masses – “it is both healthy and tasty” - rather than an elite consumer item. While milk does not attract any goods and services tax (GST), milk powder is taxed at 5%, milk fat (ghee, butter, etc) at 12% and ice cream at 18%. Such a taxation structure goes against the idea of promoting value addition in farm produce. Ice cream is a better way to give milk to children and the government should promote it by reducing the GST on it.

Imported machinery installed at Hatson Agro's plant

Chandramogan's own company, which started with making ice cream, became a full-fledged dairy concern in 1995, when it launched sale of liquid milk under the “Arokya” brand. HAP today is unique among private dairy companies in India: Not only does it procure its entire milk (35 lakh litre per day average) from about 4.5 lakh farmers, but more than 90% of the company's revenue comes from the sale of branded consumer products. That includes “Arokya” pouch milk, “Hatsun” curd, “Arun” and “Ibaco” ice cream, “HAP” and “Havia” chocolates, and “Santosa” cattle feed. That makes HAP a truly B2F-B2C (business-to-farmer and business-to-consumer) company! Chandramogan is the first private sector dairy businessman awarded the Indian Dairy Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.