Inside L & Z milk factory where quality, hygiene matter

How do you get the milk you are using for your production?
We source our milk through three sources-we have our own cows that we cross breed and they are giving us an average of 15 litres per day, per head. We also source milk from the people we call peril urban dairy farmers that have started some commercial dairy farming and the Fulani herdsmen that we made them form cooperative group. We have about three cooperatives so far that we go to their settlements early in the morning with our truck and evacuate their milk and bring to the farm. So, milk from these three sources is processed by our 20,000-litre capacity ultra-modern processing plants into various flavours of Yoghurt, ice cream and fresh milk. We now sell the dairy products all over the country, using our refrigerated trucks. We are in Enugu, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Sokoto, Kaduna, Abuja and Kano. So, we have covered the entire nation. We are the major suppliers of dairy products to Shoprite chain of retail outlets in the country. We have just been signed on by Games which is another major retail outlet in the country. So, the coming of the structured retail outlets into this country has done a good job for us, farmers. We have taken advantage of that by transforming ourselves from being farmers to agric-business-people.
What type of cattle are you using for your dairy?
We cross breed our animals over ten years of hard work. We started with the local Bokolo that we cross breed with a 100 Friesian bulls. We had the first ‘F1’ that is 50 percent local cow and 50 percent of the exotic breed of the Friesian. The advantage here is that the offspring can give you higher yield of milk, though not as high as what Friesian will give you but higher than what the local cow will give you. It is also has a gene for resistance of some diseases. This F1 we further cross breed to F2 and then it goes on and on until we arrived at the present stage where we are able to have cows that can average over 10 litres for us per day. We have now started artificial insemination. We no longer use bull, we only use bull when artificial insemination fails or as a teaser to detect feed for the cows for us to inseminate artificially. We have good partners abroad. In Africa, we have good relationship with some Kenyan companies that have developed dairy to an enviable position. We have contacted Holland and Denmark. We have benefited a lot from such contacts and we are still on it.
Is there anything the Fulani herders are enjoying from you in addition to being paid for the milk they sell to you?
We have a mutually beneficial relationship. We get milk from them and we make sure that they are in the business of producing milk because the more volume they give us, the more profitable for us. So, whatever it takes for us to ensure that they continue to give us high milk yield or high volume of milk, we would do that. We are a business entity. We do not have free money to throw around. It is from our profit that we plough something back into the community to ensure that this business of milk production continues. Of course, we need to encourage them to give us more milk and not to hawk the milk. So, what we did was to tell them that if we are buying a litre of milk from you at a certain amount, and you agree to send a female child to school, we will add N20 on each litre of milk we buy from you. This strategy, we found very interesting, because the response was encouraging to the extent that almost all the households have now sent their daughters to school. So, we have made the price uniform because everybody has sent the child to school. Another benefit we share with them is the artificial insemination programme which they have been benefiting through us.
How do cattle rustling affect your business?
Mercifully, Kano State has not experienced any case of rustling so far. So, it has not been an issue for us as at now but we see it as a potential security threat. We are aware that the state government is conscious of that fact and I am sure they are taking necessary steps to avert it.
Are you thinking of expanding this business to cattle fattening, abattoir operation and the rest?
As a business people that are out to make money, we are ready for anything that will give us money. But for now, we are more interested in expanding our existing business and to that extent I am happy to report that the Funds for Agric Finance in Nigeria (FUFIN) had just invested in our business. They have taken 25 percent of our share. We have signed the agreement and they will soon come on board. We hope that the strategic growth plan that we have in place will be pursued to its logical conclusion with the coming of people that are technically sound in our business and in financial advisory services.
What about having more processing factories outside Kano?
A decision to site a factory is normally informed by two reasons which are closeness to raw materials and or market. We have decided to base our factory on closeness to raw material. You will agree with me that going to South-south or South-east can only take us close to the markets but very far away from our source of raw materials. It is easier to transport the finished products than to transport the raw materials. You can imagine taking raw milk from Kano to Lagos to process it. Fresh milk can only stay outside the cow for not more than one hour at a very good temperature. You can see how delicate it is. But with the improvement of cold chain infrastructure, we may be looking at it into the future. But you know how our electricity supply has been and that is supposed to be the bedrock of cold room infrastructure.
Can you give us a rundown of the various stages of milk/yoghurt processing?
We have a standard laboratory with technical people that have to ascertain the quality of the milk by carrying out physical and chemical analysis. When the milk is certified okay for processing, we get to the next level. We have a tank that we collect all the milk in. It is from the tank that we decide what to do with the milk. If the milk is going for fresh milk, it is much easier. We just pass it through the pasteurising unit. We have what we call the ‘Continues Flow Pasteurisation Process. As the milk is flowing through the system, it is pasteurised. After that it goes to the homogenisation unit and comes back to the collection tank. If it is skimmed milk, after pasteurisation and homogenization, it has to be separated. We have an inbuilt separator that will separate for you then you now have your skimmed milk. If it is full cream, then, it does not have to pass through a separator because the cream is going with the milk. If it is going for yoghurt, then you go to the next stage of taking the milk into fermentation tanks. At a certain temperature you inoculate and allow it to stay for some hours, depending on the ambient temperature around. After which it forms your yoghurt. That is if it is the drink yoghurt. But if it is the eat yoghurt, you package it into cups and put into an incubator and leave it overnight. Flavour and colours are added in the fermentation process. It is not as simple as I told you, but you now have an idea of how it is done.