SURGING DEMAND, OPPORTUNITIES IN DAIRY PRODUCTION

MBABANE –  Eswatini Dairy Board (EDB) Acting Dairy Development Manager Bandile Mdluli says the country imported a decreased E499 million worth of milk last year.

This is because local production of raw milk has slightly increased from 16.65 million litres in 2016 to only 20.68 million litres in 2020. This growth is against an exponential growth of milk demand and increase of retail outlets selling dairy products. This transpired last week during a business seminar hosted by MTN Eswatini’s Enterprise Business Unit targeting Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) by outlining opportunities in dairy, goat and indigenous chicken value chains worth billions of Emalangeni in total.   

seminar

Guest speakers for this seminar included Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Director Meluleki Dlamini, Eswatini Dairy Board (EDB) Acting Dairy Development Manager Bandile Mdluli, and Eswatini Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (ESWADE) National Project Director-Smallholder Market-led Project Lynn Kota, one of the guest speakers during the seminar.
Mdluli said the demand for milk is rapidly increasing as people consume milk and high-value milk products like yoghurt and cheese. He clarified that when converted to milk equivalents, these products translate to high amounts of raw milk. Eswatini currently has 679 small-scale dairy farmers: 47 medium-scale farmers and 10 large-scale farmers. Jointly, they have a herd of 5 543 dairy cows. The local dairy industry value chain includes milk producers, processors, retailers and consumers. 

increase

“For the country to limit the number of milk imports, we have to increase local production and also establish more processing facilities to produce most of the products that we import like cheese and yoghurt,” he said.
Advising participants in the seminar, Mdluli highlighted numerous opportunities for SMEs throughout this value chain. “There are opportunities for distribution of milk from producers to processors. In addition, there are opportunities for distribution of milk products from processors to retailers,” he said. Mdluli said one of the key opportunities is within the industry is dairy processing.

“Dairy processing could be split into two as follows; there is major dairy processing like what is done by Parmalat (Lactalis) and small-scale dairy processing whereby you do not need any of the big machinery. You can process soft cheeses, emasi, drinking yoghurt and fresh milk,” he explained.

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